The Salvamare law can no longer wait for the implementing decrees immediately

“Without drastic action, plastic could outweigh all fish in the ocean by 2050he warned Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, at the opening of the last UN Conference on the Oceans in Lisbon (June 2022). This prediction is already a reality”, affirms Marevivo decisively on the occasion of World Oceans Day.

“The images we see scream the dramatic situation in which the sea finds itself and they tell us about the two main problems affecting it: the excess of plastic and the drastic decrease in fish due to overfishing. Fishermen from all over the world recover more plastic than fish in their nets every day. And that’s not all.

The micro fragments that we see with the naked eye are dispersed in the waters or already ingested by the same animals that we then bring to our tables. Scientific research shows that plastic, in the form of microplastics, has entered the food chain and is present in the air we breathe and in the foods we eat. What else are we waiting for to intervene?” asks the environmental association.

“Today is Ocean Day, World Oceans Day, a date that celebrates the sea, the planet’s amniotic fluid, which allows us to live, feed and reproduce, but which must also represent a moment of awareness of the need to act with the utmost urgency to protect his health and, consequently, our very survival!”

Marevivo, Alliance of Italian Cooperatives – Fishing Sector, Mediterranean Aquaculture Association, La Grande Onda Association, AssoSub, CNR, Compagnia della Vela di Venezia, Dohrn Foundation, Italian Sailing League, Italian Naval League, Legacoop Agribusiness, Mussel Farmers Lower Lazio, OP Mytilus Campaniae , Campania Region Mollusc Production OP, Campania Region Fishing Tourism, Researchers at the Marche Polytechnic University and Sea Shepherd are asking the Government for immediate action.

“A year has already passed since the approval of the Salvamare Law which we laboriously obtained after 4 years of battles, but it is not yet operational because the implementing decrees are missing. The problem has not been solved, despite the good will of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Forestry which, in concert with the Ministry of the Environment and the Protection of the Territory and the Sea, approved one of the implementing decrees that rewards fishermen who return to land the waste found in their fishing gear. entire supply chain which provides for the landing point in the ports, with the consequent disposal of the enormous quantity of material that is brought back from the sea to the quay.This Law, therefore, which allows fishermen to deposit the plastic recovered with the nets in the ports, instead to throw it back into the sea, and to be able to install waste collection systems at the mouths of rivers, is not yet feasible”, they write on behalf of the associations.

“[Questo provvedimento] it is like Schubert’s “Unfinished”, with the difference that, even if unfinished, Schubert’s symphony could be played, while the fishermen thus could not bring their waste ashore anyway” are the words of Giampaolo BuonfiglioAGCI Agrital President.

Plastic represents 80% of waste in the oceans, from surface waters to the seabed. More than 200,000 tons of plastic end up in the Mediterranean Sea every year, i.e. the content of over 500 containers a day. It is incalculable how much plastic in these five years has ended up in the water or we have not been able to recover due to the lack of these implementing decrees.

“We know – he declares Rosalba Giugni, President Marevivo – that the implementation of the law will not solve all the problems of plastic pollution, but it represents a concrete tool for reducing its presence in the sea. Unfortunately microplastics are everywhere: in the rain, in the salt and we also ingest them in large quantities. The latest scientific discoveries show that they are also present in our bodies, they have entered the tissues of the placenta of women, the sacred place where life originates, in mother’s milk and even in seminal fluid. We still don’t know what the effects are on the human body but we do know those on animals. Marine biologists in their studies have also found a transformation of their life cycle, the change of sex and infertility. Another terrible consequence is the discovery of nanoplastics in the eyes of fish, which causes blindness. What if it happened to men too? What do we still have to discover to understand that the time has come to change course and to think that the health of the sea depends on ours and vice versa?”