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Our seas, in addition to being an essential ecosystem for global biodiversity, also play an important role in the development and the economy of our society, so we have to preserve it. The problem, as we proved in the “sea survey” we have administered to the students of our school, is a generally poor knowledge and awareness about the “health condition” of the marine ecosystem.
To achieve the goal of promoting a greater feeling about the sea, we analyzed marine biogeocenosis in various aspects, in particular:
• Plastics in the sea;
• Oil disasters;
• Increase of Temperature and chlorophyll in the sea;
• Poisonous algae;
• Coast’s kilometers
The situation of the world’s seas, in relation to the data provided by the various studies we conducted, shows two problems that have been discussed for decades: oil disasters and the presence of plastic waste in the seas.
From the data we analyzed we can understand that more than 60% of marine pollution consists of various plastics. The most important example of this tragedy is the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, an enormous (as big as the Iberian Peninsula!) island completely flooded with plastic. Crazy!
Throughout history a series of oil disasters occurred and started to engrave the condition of the marine ecosystems. Oil is a resource that has always been part of man’s life and has always been extracted because it is a resource that when converted generates a lot of energy and naturally man can’t resist all this. Although oil is useful if extracted from the seas, the extraction process is risky, otherwise we would not be talking about oil disasters at all. These generally cause the death of the marine species and the pollution of the sea water. In 15 places in which the worst disasters in history happened, more than 6 million tonnes of oil have been dumped into the sea, with huge damage to the marine ecosystems.
As already said, another crucial problem (perhaps the main problem) of our planet, and particularly of the seas, is the global warming. In order to evaluate this problem, we studied the Copernicus (www.copernicus.eu) dataset (crucial for Interreg Cascade Project) and we collected several data about the surface temperature of the sea and the concentration of the chlorophyll. So we discovered the relationship between these two variables.
Precisely, in the month of July we can see a decrease of 75% of chlorophyll’s concentration compared to the month of February. Knowing that the presence of chlorophyll in the seas is a sign of marine life wellness, the increase of temperature is a sign of a complicated life for all the species of the oceans.
Another problem that affects our seas is the presence of poisonous algae, which causes us to dislike it more and more. The poisonous algae that is more present nowadays in the Atlantic sea is the Ostreopsis Ovata. This algae is found in major quantities in Apulia, Abruzzo, Molise, Marche, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Emilia Romagna and Veneto.
We can realize the presence of the algae from a jelly layer on the surface of the sea but also from the color of the sea’s water. Generally the algae abound when the temperature of the sea is higher than 25°C and if the seas are subjected to strong winds.
The Italian and Croatian coasts are similar in many aspects, however the Italian coast has a longer overall length than the Croatian one and the Croatian coast is also made up by the addition of all the coasts of its islands.
Croatia has 5835 km of coastline but only 1777 km are continental.
In conclusion, after all these research we can declare that our seas are slowly dying and because of the fact that they are an important part of our life, we have to make things right and not take advantage of it. We can compare seas to our life, they are both messy and still unexplored, so as we preserve our life we have to do the same with the seas. For this purpose, we have to fight global warming and avoid leaving plastic waste in the sea.
"The sea and life have a lot in common. Relax. Let yourself go. Trust that you will stay afloat, and you'll stay there. If you resist, thinking that you will end up at the bottom, you really will. The choice is up to you." (Marcia Grand)
