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Concern over increasing pollution of sea in South Asia

BERHAMPUR: Sea has become a major dumping yard for wastes in south Asia, expressed experts at a workshop organised by the Ocean and Atmospheric Science & Technology Cell of the Central Ministry of Earth Sciences in the Berhampur University.

The deputy director of the cell, V.Sampat informed that during past few years the number of major urban centres on the sea coast in the country had increased many fold. Within last three decades their number has increased from 59 to 121. The population living in these urban centres by the sea has also increased to 45 million. As per an estimate around 8914 tons of waste is generated in these townships.

And most of it gets dumped into the sea. The cell has recently taken sea water samples from 13 suspected polluted points of sea from the coast line of the country. Samples have also been taken from sea near Puri and Paradeep in Orissa.

The experts felt overuse of pesticides that at last reach the sea through the water cycle is having extreme negative impact on the flora and fauna of the sea.

In India the sea coast on the western side is mostly polluted by the industries while the eastern coast is polluted by marine aqua culture and pesticides used in agriculture. World’s one fifth population lives in south Asia.

It is estimated this population may be dumping 11,650 tons of waste into sea every day. Apart from it the ships traveling in sea also dump their solid waste in sea.

T.K.Pandian of Madurai Karmaraj University stressed study of habits of marine animals like olive ridleys as it could provide important data regarding effect of human activities on the sea and its flora and fauna. Vice-Chancellor of the university Bijay Kumar Sahu who also happens to be a marine scientist and is attached to the cell also attended the workshop.

The workshop was also attended by scientists V.V.Sharama and P.G.Dastidar. They discussed the future research projects that could be taken up to study the marine features in a better way for the benefit of human race.

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