Fish and other marine life are a significant source of protein for up to a billion people worldwide. The Caribbean is no different in that the ocean provides for your food and the turquoise waters beckon tourists to put money in your pocket.
Jamaican breakfast of ackee and salt fish, callaloo.There are myriad problems threatening the oceans. The biggest being climate change and it’s evil twin ocean acidification. Overfishing, nutrient runoff and ocean plastic also wreak havoc in the oceans.
Plastic never goes away. It breaks down into smaller pieces but it will be with us forever. In every single year, we humans add eight million metric tons of plastic to the world’s oceans. Plastic pollution isn’t just an eyesore, it’s harming over 600 species around the world. Around 100,000 marine animals and more than one million birds perish because of plastic every year. Fish ingest this plastic, which can cause intestinal injury and death, and transfers the plastic up the food chain to bigger fish and eventually to our dinner plate mostly in the form of plastic microfibers.
Photos posted by photographer Caroline Power last week showed the Caribbean Sea inundated with man-made trash consisting of plastic utensils, bags, bottles and Styrofoam for as far as the eye could see.
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