De­vesh Bharath

This is the third edi­tion of a sev­en-part se­ries fea­tur­ing sec­ondary school stu­dents pro­vid­ing their thoughts on En­vi­ron­men­tal, So­cial, and Gov­er­nance (ESG) is­sues as part of the HAR­CON Na­tion­al Youth Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG Pi­lot Project

“Why is pro­tect­ing our oceans im­por­tant?”

Our oceans do so much and yet many peo­ple do not rec­og­nize the im­por­tance of ocean ecosys­tems. Oceans cov­er rough­ly 70 per cent of our plan­et’s sur­face as well as pro­duce at a min­i­mum of 50 per cent of the oxy­gen that we breathe.

As a cit­i­zen of T&T, I know that both the sea and rivers con­tribute im­mense­ly to the way in which we live in so many ways.

Coral reefs are one ma­jor ma­rine ecosys­tem. Corals are liv­ing or­gan­isms, which sup­port our ma­rine ecosys­tem in ways peo­ple may not ap­pre­ci­ate. The reef sys­tem it­self pro­vides pro­tec­tion to our coasts by shield­ing them from the brunt of the sea. With­out them our coasts would be erod­ed, re­duc­ing our lim­it­ed is­land space sig­nif­i­cant­ly. The reef al­so hous­es ma­rine species in­clud­ing many va­ri­eties of fish and sea hors­es among oth­ers .

One ma­jor prob­lem that coral reefs face glob­al­ly is what is known as bleach­ing. Coral bleach­ing is the process when corals be­come white due to loss of sym­bi­ot­ic al­gae and pho­to­syn­thet­ic pig­ments. This loss of pig­ment can be caused by var­i­ous stres­sors, such as changes in wa­ter tem­per­a­ture, light, wa­ter salin­i­ty or nu­tri­ents.

As part of the HAR­CON Na­tion­al Youth Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and ESG Pi­lot Project im­mer­sive ac­tiv­i­ty, we vis­it­ed the Buc­coo Reef. Led by Dr. Ra­han­na Ju­man from the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs (IMA), we were able to ob­serve the corals which are sup­posed to house many col­or­ful va­ri­eties of sea an­i­mals and coral flo­ra. How­ev­er, the reef was start­ing to be­come sparse­ly pop­u­lat­ed and a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the corals were white in colour, in­di­cat­ing symp­toms of bleach­ing.

Ris­ing glob­al tem­per­a­tures, that im­pact ma­rine con­di­tions, are caus­ing the corals to slow­ly die. This is a prob­lem in more ways than one since many fish live there, and the ef­fects of the bleach­ing can cre­ate re­duce fish­ery stocks, which in turn re­duces the po­ten­tial catch for the fish­er­men and ul­ti­mate­ly has a so­cio-eco­nom­ic im­pact on peo­ple’s liveli­hoods.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, if the pro­tec­tion that the corals pro­vide di­min­ish­es, it can al­so im­pact tourism as the reef will no longer be an at­trac­tive site for them to vis­it, there­by con­tribut­ing to an­oth­er neg­a­tive so­cio-eco­nom­ic prob­lem that can af­fect the econ­o­my of our coun­try.

Rivers al­so con­tribute ma­jor sources of pol­lu­tants to our ma­rine en­vi­ron­ment, and by ex­ten­sion coral bleach­ing, as they dis­charge large amounts of chem­i­cal and sol­id waste pol­lu­tants in­to our oceans. The more we pol­lute the land that drains in­to the oceans, is the high­er de­gree of dam­age that we do, not on­ly our reef sys­tems, but the ocean as a whole. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal for small is­land na­tions.

On our field trip to To­ba­go, we were able to see the world fa­mous brain coral, which un­for­tu­nate­ly showed sig­nif­i­cant ev­i­dence of bleach­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, but promis­ing­ly, is show­ing some signs of re­gain­ing some sem­blance of its for­mer colour.

Through un­der­stand­ing of the im­por­tance of our ocean and reef sys­tems along with com­mit­ment, we can work to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly re­store the corals.

Some ways we can help the oceans is to ban or at least lim­it sin­gle use plas­tics and sty­ro­foam, par­tic­i­pate in beach cleanups to re­duce plas­tic pol­lu­tion which al­so im­proves coastal beach en­vi­ron­ments, mak­ing our coastal ar­eas clean­er and more pris­tine for sus­tain­able en­joy­ment.