Marine life under threat

With World Oceans Day observed on Thursday, we must turn our attention towards how little we have done to protect our seas and the marine life that lives within. The Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea are host to hundreds of thousands of marine species, including the Blue Whale, Humpback Whale and the Leatherback Sea Turtles. Many of these are now endangered. The biggest threat at one time was overfishing. Now, the biggest threat is considered to be plastic. Humans dump 20,023 million tonnes of plastics into the oceans every year. It is predicted that the amount of plastics in the oceans will exceed marine life by 2050. Plastic consumption is reported to cause the death of over 100,000 marine animals each year, depleting the immense diversity of life in the oceans.

The threat of overfishing cannot be said to have passed yet. Commercial ocean fishing remains a major source of the threat to marine animals. There has been little done to regulate marine fishing practices which lead to endangered species being caught and consumed. This is in addition to the threat posed by more traditional chemical effluents, including industrial waste and oil leaks. A commission appointed by the Supreme Court only recently reprimanded authorities for dumping untreated sewage into the Arabian Sea. The discharge into the sea has meant that Sea View is continuing to lose its marine life. According to reports, around 580 million gallons of untreated waste is dumped into the Arabian Sea from Karachi each day. This has increased the demand for biological oxygen in waters near the shore to 10 times the normal requirement. This is in addition to the presence of dangerous bacteria in the waters. Leaks from oil tankers and other vessels are another threat set to be amplified once the Gwadar Port begins to rival the Karachi port. Pakistan Navy is set to launch a Marine Awareness Program, which is certainly a start. But the issues that must be dealt with will require more than awareness. There is a need for a sound set of policies to deal with the growing threats to marine life caused by human actions.