Illegal fishing, water traffic, tourism. These human activities are providing detrimental effects on the reason people travel to this area of the Mediterranean in the first place. Beautiful days of sunshine, over 300 to approximate, clear blue waters perfectly suited for scuba diving and snorkeling, un-touched mountains for hiking and white sand beaches create quite a draw for the rest of the world, to this area. And while this is all good for the economy of the places to stay and of island hotels, and is good for the people living here and making a living, the oceans and the marine life are being affected. In a bad way. Of the pollution for example, not emissions from the water sport vehicles nor the cruise ships, but plastic makes up about 75 percent in the waters of the sea. 95 percent of that plastic-pollution is in the way of simple plastic bags. Plastic bags! The writer of this would perhaps find this an incredulous claim had she not seen this first hand, not in the Mediterranean Sea, but in the Sea of Cortez off the coasts of the Gulf of Mexico and the Baja Strip of California, the city of San Felipe in Mexico. Beautiful warm waters, secluded from oil tankers, teaming not with marine life, but market place plastic bags. One should really consider the effects when asked ‘Paper or Plastic’ at the local grocery store. Or better yet, say ‘neither, I’ve brought my own’.
Anyway, the governments of the over twenty European countries have come together to save the sick Mediterranean Sea. The Spanish Island of Mallorca is among the first to install energy saving light bulbs in all of the traffic lights on the island. When all the electricity used on the island, in the clubs and the shops and the resorts switch over, we’ll talk. The transition to these bulbs in the traffic signals alone will reduce carbon emissions by 2,000 tons. Just the traffic lights.
With all the financially successful ports and fishing companies that run along the coasts of Europe, this is a huge task to take on, but one that is so important. Many species that inhabit these waters, migrate and reproduce are in danger of extinction. Regardless of one’s own belief system of the cruelty towards the ‘lesser’ species, they play a part in the whole. ‘When a butterfly flutters its wings in China’ is a statement that comes to mind. Every species is part of the whole, and a part necessary in the continuation of the existence of all life forms and the world as we know it and have come to love it.
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