By the A.M. Costa Rica staff
The Surf Federation highlighted the effort of rower and the environmentalist, Gerónimo Ciuti, who, through his MareBlu foundation, has been responsible for creating beach cleaning tourism. He finally fulfilled its promise to navigate through the Gulf of Nicoya* in a raft made with the waste that he collected from the sea.
On a raft made with plastic bottles removed from the beaches and the ocean, Cuiti rowed a route of 19 kilometers that took more than 5 hours. It is the same route used by the ferry Naviera Tambor.
The objective of the risky crossing was to attract the attention of the largest number of people in order to continue creating awareness of the serious damage that humans have done to the ocean with the use of plastic.
During the route, Cuiti found a dead eel that had been hanged by a plastic package around its neck.
"This is irrefutable proof of the damage we have caused due to pollution," Ciuti said.
The MareBlu Foundation published Cuiti's video, can be reached on its Facebook page*, showing him rowing through the Gulf of Nicoya.
According to World Nature Organization, billions upon billions of items of plastic waste choking oceans,
lakes, and rivers and piling up on land is more than unsightly and
harmful to plants and wildlife.
The organization announced the following 10 facts shed light on how plastic is proving dangerous to planet, health, and wildlife.
- About 8 million metric tons of plastic are thrown into the ocean annually. Of those, 236,000 tons are microplastics.
- There are five massive patches of plastic in the oceans around the world. These huge concentrations of plastic debris cover large swaths of the ocean; the one between California and Hawaii is the size of the state of Texas.
- Every minute, one garbage truck of plastic is dumped into our oceans.
- The amount of plastic in the ocean is set to increase tenfold by 2020.
- By 2050 there will be more plastic in the oceans than there are fish (by weight).
- Plastic is found in the ocean as far as 11km deep, meaning synthetic fibers have contaminated even the most remote places on Earth.
- Many marine organisms can’t distinguish common plastic items from food. Animals who eat plastic often starve because they can’t digest the plastic and it fills their stomachs, preventing them from eating real food.
- The likelihood of coral becoming diseased increases from 4% to 89% after coming in contact with marine plastic. It also damages the skin of coral, allowing infection.
- There is more plastic than natural prey at the sea surface of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which means that organisms feeding at this area are likely to have plastic as a major component of their diets. For instance, sea turtles by-caught in fisheries operating within and around the patch can have up to 74% (by dry weight) of their diets composed of ocean plastics.
- Many fish humans consume, including brown trout, cisco, and perch, have at one time or another, ingested plastic microfibers.
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