Ecological Crises in Oceans and Coasts:
Coastal and marine areas all over the world including those in India are under stress, because two thirds of the world's population lives near the coasts, and 60% of the marine food is harvested from the zone near the coasts. Most of the sewage, garbage and industrial - wastes find their way into the sea. Ever since the lndustrial Revolution, technology has been developed to increase production of various kinds of goods, without regard to where the smoke from the chimneys would go, or where various kinds of washed chemicals-many of them poisonous would flow to. So industry produces massive amounts of "waste" which is allowed to reach the sea. It was also thought in earlier times that the sea is so big, you can throw anything into it without affecting it. Now, however, even in India, it has come to pass that huge quantities of dead fish were found floating in the Arabian sea on the western coast. due to poisonous outflows from a fertiliser factory. Such happenings are not rare, and industrial wastes must be treated to remove harmful chemicals, before allowing them to go into the sea. The same should be done to sewage, which carries harmful chemicals and bacteria into sea water.
The rivers, which join the seas, bring sand from the hills and plains, and thus lot of silt gathers near the coasts. Rivers also bring to the sea water, runoff from the fields, which, today. means a certain amount of fertilisers and pesticides.
A new factor has recently come to light and that is chemicals from nucle'ar power plants and nuclear industry.
This waste has radioactive chemicals which can demolish and destroy living organisms in ocean waters. Huge amounts of such waste is generated every year. particularly, in the advanced countries of the world, who have found ways of dumping this waste in the coastal areas of the poor countries.