To experts such as Alicia Herrera Ulibarri or Miguel Borja Aguiar, the recent contamination of pellets On the Galician coasts it sounds extremely familiar. “In the Canary Islands we have been confirming its presence for a long time, more than a decade,” explains the first, a biologist, doctor in Oceanography and member of the Ecoaqua institute, dependent on the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. “The Canary Islands, due to their status as oceanic islands, are exposed to the arrival of all types of marine litter, unfortunately on a regular basis,” adds Miguel Borja Aguiar, a researcher at the same institute.
Not in vain, the islands of Lanzarote (especially Famara beach, in the municipality of Teguise) and La Graciosa (Lambra beach) are two of the three black spots in Spain where the most pellets, according to data from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. The other is Tarragona, where the Prosecutor's Office has just opened an investigation into years of pollution. However, unlike the Catalan coast where pellets They come from their own petrochemical industry, here in the Canary Islands they come from afar. It is the Atlantic currents, largely responsible for the benign climate of the archipelago, that drag these little balls from other areas of the Atlantic or even the Mediterranean.
In fact, chance would have it that a few days after the ship spilled Toconao, whose plastic content has littered the Galician and Asturian coasts, the presence of microplastics was detected on Bajamar beach (northwest of Tenerife) in the Canary Islands. In the following days, remains were also found on Viuda beach (municipality of Candelaria, east of Tenerife), Garachico port (north of Tenerife), on San Juan beach (in Guía de Isora, west of Tenerife), as well as in the coast of the islands of Lanzarote (La Garita beach, in Haría); Gran Canaria (Las Canteras beach, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria) and El Hierro (on Arenas Blancas beach). This situation forced the Government of the Canary Islands to declare a pre-alert preventively, which closed two days later.
This constitutes a painful routine on the coasts of the islands. For this reason, experts were quick to rule out that these spills came from the Toconao. The professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of La Laguna Javier Hernández Borges pointed out, in fact, that according to the analysis of the samples – collected in Bajamar, Candelaria and Garachico – it is pellets coming from different spills, which show deterioration after spending many years in the ocean and, therefore, it is very difficult to establish their exact origin. Of course, it is likely that the pellets from the container lost by the ship Toconao off Portugal and which ended up on the Galician coast also ended up reaching the Canary Islands. For this to happen, however, at least a year must pass, according to Herrera's calculations. “By then it will be just another element of that marine garbage that we are sadly getting used to,” Borja Aguiar points out.
These pellets They constitute the raw material for the manufacture of plastic objects. They are made, above all, of polyethylene or polypropylene, generally have a spherical or lentil shape about five millimeters in diameter and are either white or transparent. This component has become known due to the recent spill that has occurred on the coasts of Galicia and Asturias. In the case of the Canary Islands, the spills occur thousands of kilometers away and the currents that arrive are the main responsible for the presence of these plastics. “The so-called Canary Current reaches the islands, which originates in the Iberian Peninsula near the Azores Islands and drags with it all the garbage it finds,” Gregorio Louzara, manager and co-founder of the Gran Canaria company Ecos, dedicated to the study Marine.
In addition to the large ocean currents, the so-called mesoscale structures, composed of currents or eddies up to 100 kilometers in length, influence this phenomenon. Researchers agree on the idea that the vast majority of pellets that appear in the Canary Islands comes from containers that fall into the sea from large cargo ships, since there are no industries dedicated to the manufacture of plastic on the islands. Furthermore, these incidents usually occur in international waters, so shipping companies do not usually report them, and this is what makes the archipelago, unlike what can happen in Tarragona, a victim. silent with difficulties finding who to complain to.
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After years of work, Herrera, however, has found three especially problematic spots: La Lambra beach, in La Graciosa; Famara beach, in Lanzarote; and Playa Grande, in Poris de Abona (in the east of Tenerife). In October 2015, for example, there was a major waste dump in Famara. Cleaning groups were organized, and subsequent sampling determined that more than 40% of the sample was made up of pellets.
High pollution on several beaches
In 2017, the ULPGC warned in a report titled Microplastic and tar pollution on three Canary Islands beaches: An annual study the results of an investigationón developed between 2015 and 2016, and which confirmed the high pollution of these beaches, to which was added that of Las Canteras (in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria), associated with periods of strong waves and wind. This same study warned that these microplastic discharges are incorporated into food chains when ingested by zooplankton and maintains that they act, fundamentally, as endocrine disruptors, altering the hormonal system and can produce carcinogenic and mutagenic effects on species.
If they are not new, why did the Government of the Canary Islands choose to declare a pre-alert? “We decided to activate it to be able to articulate a series of follow-ups from both Maritime Rescue and state, regional and local administrations that cannot be carried out under normal conditions,” explains Montserrat Román, head of the Civil Protection and Emergency Assistance Service, in a telephone conversation. Emergencies of the Government of the Canary Islands. “The pre-alert is totally preventive, in which no risk materializes and in which the conditions do not exist to activate a higher phase” such as the alert or emergency – “far from it” – she says. “The Bajamar samples worried us because of the quantity: it was an anomaly because it is an unusual site and there are considerable quantities. It requires a contrasted and organized response. “We can’t watch and do nothing.”
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