Revitalization: Collective Action for the Ocean.

 

Sri Lanka faced lots of difficulties related to the Environmental section during the last three years. The major problems are Non-renewable energy outages and Agricultural related issues but in the year 2021 X-Press Pearl incident happened. That incident is one of the worst maritime disasters in Sri Lanka. It impacted Sri Lanka’s sensitive coastal environment. Do you know the impact of that incident?

 X-press pearl ship contains a large number of toxic materials such as chemicals and Plastics. According to the reports, the container ship was carrying 78 metric tons of plastic materials, and shipping containers containing these materials burned and has fallen into the ocean.

Do you think that impact is now over and there are no Pollutants in our beach areas? No, That is not true. Still these pollutants are polluting our marine environment and ocean because plastics similar to those released in this spill are non-biodegradable.

Impact of these Micro-plastics:-

• Enlargement of micro-plastic affects the marine animal’s health and their lifetime.
• Pollute the beach areas and environment.
•  Pollute the coral reefs.
• Turtle and marine mammal deaths.

Images captured at Wellawatta beach 07.05.2022

These are the images captured in the Wellawatte beach area in the year 2022. Still, these plastic materials are here and these plastics will pollute our environment for a long period. What can we do to protect our ocean environment? As environmental technology students, we can be role models for society. A behavioral change is needed. If we see a waste plastic bottle on the ocean side we can put it into the correct waste container and we can organize collective actions for protecting the ocean environment.        

 References

X-Press Pearl Maritime Disaster Sri Lanka - Report of the UN Environmental Advisory Mission (July 2021).

Oceanswell.org- resources-on-mv-Xpress-pearl. https://www.newswire.lk/2021/06/02/cej-director-releases-full-list-of-goods-obtained-by-rti-on-sinking-ship

Written by

Asitha Erandika

Undergraduate, Department of Civil and Environmental Technology

University of Sri Jayewardenepura.