“I would love
to see Nova Scotia do the same for marine waste as we have for on-land
waste,” Lisa Kretz tells me in Clean Nova Scotia’s lunch room. She is
the project officer for the organization’s marine waste project. “There
needs to be more awareness and education, one person at a time.”
Today it’s my turn, and what she teaches me is astounding. “The
problem with marine waste is it’s out of sight, out of mind,” she says.
According to Department of Fisheries and Oceans studies, 70 percent of
ocean waste lies under the sea.
In Halifax Harbour, the biggest sources of that waste are not
industrial, are not related to transportation of goods or people and
don’t come from our bums. Inland litter runoff and recreational boating
create more than half the junk down there.
Mostly it’s plastic: plastic bags, plastic tampon applicators,
plastic bottles and wrappers. Kretz cites an old study of Sable Island
beach waste, 60 percent of which was plastic—with another 30 percent
being rope and other fishing equipment.
In a federal survey, Maritime fishers reported dumping about 600,000
bait boxes overboard a year, and that’s just what they admitted to.
“The old traps were wood and the rope was hemp,” Kretz says. “Now
it’s a synthetic sea. The waste is ubiquitous.”
So much so that the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in
California estimates that underwater floating plastics outnumber
zooplankton by a six to one ratio—in some areas the ratio is 10 to
one. Fish and other marine animals mistake the plastic for food. It
either kills them or we eat it—mmm, plastic fish. Brain food.
When marine life isn’t dining on fine plastics, it’s getting
entangled in them. Lost or abandoned fishing gear goes right on
catching fish even without the guidance of human hands—known in the
biz as ghost fishing.
Recreational boaters do as much damage as fishers. “This year we’re
focusing on blackwater,” says Kretz, “which is raw sewage being pumped
or dumped from recreational boats.”
Legally, small vessels can’t discharge untreated sewage within three
miles of the shore, or 12 miles for larger boats, but the law is easily
ignored or forgotten. Kretz says one recreational boater’s raw sewage
contains as much fecal coliform as 10,000 people whose sewage is
treated. The organic waste poisons fish and degrades reefs, creating
dead zones where nothing survives.
Kretz is hard at work changing the throwaway mariner culture. “The
fishermen care,” she says. “These are good guys, and they have a vested
interest in keeping the waters clean and protecting the fisheries. And
once recreational boaters know about the problem they are happy to do
the work.”
She says that in the many Nova Scotian harbours lacking disposal
facilities, fishers are known to bag their garbage and bring it home
with them. So-called waste can also bring in a little extra cash: old
fishing ropes are sold to farmers and old nets are used on golf course
driving ranges.
In all, Clean Nova Scotia works in 21 harbours across the province,
bringing together concerned fishers, harbour authorities, municipal
governments, waste educators and the feds to find local solutions to an
international problem. The solutions tend to be a combination of public
education and low-tech preventative solutions, like bilge socks.
“The bilge is a cavity at the bottom of the boat where water and
fuel gather, and are traditionally pumped out,” Kretz explains. “Bilge
socks absorb fuel and can be disposed of at hazardous waste sites on
land.”
She and summer students give the socks to recreational boaters at
events around the province, and hand out maps detailing the locations
of the province’s 16 pump-out stations, where boat waste can be safely
disposed.
Kretz also works with boating clubs to make environmental
responsibility easier for their members. With Kretz’s guidance, Dan
Gallina, manager of the Dartmouth Yachting Club, received a small grant
from the province’s Resource Recovery Fund Board to put out waste
disposal bins and instructive signs for members. “It started with our
pumphouse station,” Gallina says, “which holds raw sewage in a
6,000-litre tank. Now we have a 500-litre waste oil tank, bins for oily
rags and pads, and we recycle filters, the oil itself and paint.”
Kretz adds that with a little planning, maybe even a composting
toilet on board, boaters of all kinds can easily eliminate their share
of marine waste. As for us Halifax landlubbers, we could use some
municipal intelligence on that whole sewage thing.
This article appears in Aug 13-19, 2009.