Sea near Mumbai among most polluted in the world, says study

The seas near Mumbai, Kerala and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are among the most polluted in the world, a global study that mapped global marine pollution found.

Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI), Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research in Germany have for the first time compiled 1,237 scientific studies on marine litter into a single, comprehensive database called Litterbase.

Litterbase establishes a global map identifying several such locations in the world with the maximum marine plastic pollution. Garbage, mainly plastic, has for decades choked our rivers and streams that ultimately flow into the ocean.

And Mumbai’s coast, and therefore the sea next to it, is among the worst of the lot. The database did a quantitative analysis of plastic debris on beaches in Mumbai and found an average of 68.83 items a sqm at four beaches – Juhu, Versova, Dadar and Aksa — most of it (41.85%) were microplastics ranging in size from 1m to 5m.

Lead author of the paper, HB Jayashri, from the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency in Sri Lanka told HT the highest quantity of microplastics was seen in the Juhu beach (55.33%), followed by Versova (28.8%), Dadar (18.6%) and Aksa (7.9%).

“The ocean around Mumbai is one of the most polluted in the world,” said Jayashri. “The major contributing factors for the litter are from recreational and religious activities and fishing, which suggests that most of the plastic pollution in the sea has its source on land. We also found that poorly treated domestic waste ended up polluting the ocean even more.”