With excessive use of plastic equipment for fishing and poor waste management in urban areas, are we destroying the marine ecosystem along the coastline? A research article written by V. Anu Pavithran of Thalassery says the presence of micro plastic particles in seawater along the north Kerala coast is alarming.
Ms. Pavithran had done her research in 2018 and 2019 and had collected samples from specific locations in north Kerala, including Payyambalam, Muzhappilangadu, and Thalassery in Kannur district, the Union Territory of Mahe, and Chombala in Kozhikode district, as part of her work. All the sampled locations are near active fishery zones and harbours and are predominantly urban. They were deliberately chosen to assess if human activities contributed to the presence of micro plastics in seawater.
The analysis of the samples showed the presence of micro plastic fibres ranging from 0.29 millimetres to 2 millimetres in them. They were of five different kinds of polymer compositions — polypropylene (PP), polybutadiene (BR), polyamide (PA), polyethylene (PE), and polyethylene-co-vinyl acetate (PEVA).
“The dominance of polypropylene in these zones highlights the fact that these coastal zones are highly altered by anthropogenic [polluting human] activities. The presence of PP, PEVA, BR, and PA is testimony to poor waste treatment strategies and lack of proper recycling and management of discarded plastic materials,” Ms. Pavithran said in the article that was published in the Journal of Sea Research recently.
She further observed that the presence of BR in the coastal waters of the Muzhappilangadu drive-in beach pointed to poor tourism management as well as recreational activities. “As all the small polymer particles observed in the current study are the main components of packaging materials, fishing nets, and floats, it is clear that micro-plastic particles in the coastal seawater originate from polluting activities in the coastal areas,” she said.
Ms. Pavithran, a PhD holder from Cochin University of Science and Technology (Cusat) and a postgraduate in Marine Biology, felt that excessive production and use of plastic coupled with poor recycling / reuse strategies had already reached a point where it might take hundreds of years to eliminate the existing plastic pollution. Controlled production and use of plastics and proper management of plastic waste are imperative to reduce pollution caused by micro-plastics in the environment.
The study was done as part of her post-doctoral research at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru. It was funded by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) under its Small Grant Innovation Programme (SGIP). She was guided by Karthik Shanker and Rohini Balakrishnan of the IISc.
