May 1, 2018 – As the quantity of plastic waste in the sea keeps rising, it’s getting increasingly harder to keep our beaches in a pristine shape
It’s starting to seem not a day can pass without a story of polluted waters and beaches coming our way from a certain place on the Adriatic… Yesterday, it was Komolac, where 73 shopping carts were raised from the sea at the ACI Marina Dubrovnik. This time around, it’s Vis island, a world-renowned gem whose towns and beaches regularly get showered with superlatives in international headlines. Unfortunately, they also get showered by waste, so to speak – debris flown downstream from Albania and Montenegro, then washed up on Croatian shores by the sea.
Robert Pašičko, Ph.D. from the Faculty of Geotechnical Engineering in Zagreb has been staying on Vis island recently. He published a post on Facebook earlier today, a batch of images showcasing the dreadful shape of several locations on the otherwise gorgeous island. Plastic in the sea has become an ecocide, wrote Pašičko, disclosing photos of three iconic beaches on Vis: Stiniva, Zaglav and Milna.
Stiniva bay, a darling of every travel website and promo video that have anything to do with tourism in Croatia, was covered in so much waste, it took 40 trash bags to pack it all up. And who was it, trying to deliver this natural treasure from its suffocating state? One woman and her two daughters. If we were to clean up the smaller pieces of debris as well, wrote Pašičko, it would take some 10-20 bags more.
He also enclosed a photo of Zaglav beach – at least 200 trash bags? – he remarked, and Milna beach.
“In circumstances like these, we truly need plenty of positive people as they’re the only ones who can save us from turning into one gigantic landfill. Is it really possible that the cleanliness of Vis beaches has come to depend on the good will of one mom and her kids? On this day, several thousand trash bags could be filled by waste from Vis beaches alone. Who knows what state the rest of the Adriatic is in, and what’s going on with plastic that has covered the seabed and that’s gradually filling the fish we’re eating”, Pašičko asked.
Making sure not to stop at criticism only, he announced that he and his students will carry out a cleanup action on Vis. Let’s follow suit and help keep the coast clean by sticking to this simple rule that was recently making the rounds on Planet Earth Day:
