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On Mexico’s Caribbean Coast, There’s Lobster for the Tourists and Microplastics for Everyone Else
The fishermen of Puerto Morelos complain of pirates who fish off-season with total impunity, while their small catches are contaminated by the abundant microplastics in the sea.
Omar Oslet Rivera-Garibay, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, documented the lives of these fishermen in a recent study. Microplastics contain potentially hazardous chemicals, such as plastic monomers and additives, and they absorb toxic contaminants from the environment, like harmful microbes and algae that may cause illnesses in humans,” Rivera-Garibay says. Right now, the sea is full of pirates,” says Ezequiel Sánchez Herrera, a representative of the cooperative, referring to the hundreds of boats that poach in the Mexican Caribbean, ignoring fishing bans and other regulations.
Or read this on Wired
