The UN organised Ocean Day concentrates on spreading awareness
about the significance of oceans in our day to day lives. It is celebrated
every year on 8th June. The UN states that the oceans are our natural heritage
and they are the lungs of our planet, as 70% of the oxygen we breathe comes
from the ocean and they are responsible for absorbing 30% of CO2 produced by
humans & industrial pollution.
They are a vital
resource, fulfilling our needs in terms of food & raw material for
medicines. The main agenda of the UN behind celebrating this day is to spark a
cross-globe movement for sustainable management of ocean and conservation of
marine life. Not only this, the oceans are a beautiful wealth of our biosphere
and ecosystem.
However, it has been researched that there are nearly 500 dead zones in ocean spreading across more than 245000 sq. km. of the planet. The primary reason for this disastrous face of the ocean is due to discharge of untreated toxins like 70 % of industrial waste, 90% of domestic wastewater, a huge amount of agricultural pesticides, sewage and plastics.
As per UN environment Programme Report 2006, every square mile of ocean contains 46000 pieces of floating plastic. It has been estimated that the ocean contains 250 Metric tons of plastic waste.
As per the study, there are 267 marine species which are affected by marine debris(Floating Plastic & garbage in the ocean). Either they get tangled in the plastic waste or get infected or diseased by the toxins present in water. Every year 1 lac sea mammals & turtles and more than 1 million sea birds die due to marine pollution.
The aquatic animals which are infected by the ocean also form part of the food chain which comprises humans as final consumers. There have been clinical cases of hormonal, neural, reproductive, & kidney problems due to the consumption of infected seafood. Not only this, every year more than 250 million people get clinically affected due to bathing in contaminated water. The waste discharge released into oceans pollutes the water with oil, mercury, lead, phosphates, petrochemicals, nitrates, asbestos and other heavy metals. Approximately 12% of the total oil spilt into the ocean is due to oil rigs.
Marine pollution has taken a severe twist and turns to reach alarming levels of danger. However, there are people around the world who are taking one step every day to clean the crimes of the whole human species. In 2015, Afroz Shah, a 34-year-old guy & his 84-year-old neighbour Harbansh Mathur from Mumbai initiated world’s biggest beach cleaning movement for cleaning 2.5 km long Versova Beach in Mumbai by removing 20 Million kgs of trash. Initially it was only the two of them but subsequently hundreds of others joined the movement and as a result, they ended up making the whole beach a clean place in three years.
Also, there is a website by the name of “Responsible Travels”
that provides travel plans, where you can go on a vacation that involve
environmental conservation programmes. People are giving their share of hard
work and dedication to saving the planet, but still the no. of earth-saving
hands are so much lesser than those polluting it. We need to concentrate more
on factors which are responsible for it so that we can cease the escalation of
pollution and initiate the treatment activity of the diseased planet.
Let us make this planet again the way God crafted it, pure, divine & beautiful.