Fishermen Puerto Morelos, in Mexico in the Caribbean, risk their lives every time they go out to sea to fish or dive in lobsters. Their reward depends on happiness, because the weather often prevents you from going out, while on other days they throw, they come back empty. Every day these employees put the best lobsters for wealthy vacationers who come to the region, while they and their families cut off many advantages of tourism development, switch to fish full of microplasty.
Omar Oslet Rivera-Garibay, researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology at the University of Nacional AutoNoma de In the last study. He and his colleagues inform that while members of Pescadores de Puerto Morelos fishing collections and sell high -value seafood products to satisfy the appetite of tourists, remain only fish caught near the beaches in the city to get their own consumption. It has a compact commercial value and is contaminated with compact fragments of plastics.
As part of their research, Rivera-Garibay and the team won 424 fish from 29 different species, using the same methods as the cooperative’s partners. They were all cut and their digestive tract was removed and examined. Pollution was found in 57 percent of fish, recovering over thousands of microplastic particles. In the research, she noticed that “fish caught with lines in shallow waters near the coast had much more microplastics in the intestines than those caught in deeper waters.”
Fishermen taken by fishermen to feed their families, containing more microplastics, containing more microplastics; High value fish are sold to tourists here in the state of Quintana Roo, which receives over 20 million visitors each year, who spend over $ 20 billion. Quintana Roo is a Mexican state with the highest tourism revenues, but this does not flow to the bottom of the population pyramid. According to data from the Mexican Economy Secretariat, 42.6 percent of the population in Puerto Morelos lived in poverty or extreme poverty.
Rivera-Garibay emphasizes the dangers of microplasty in fish. “These species are consumed by people. Microplastics contain potentially dangerous chemicals, such as monomers and plastic additives, and absorbs toxic environmental impurities, such as harmful microorganisms and algae, which can cause diseases in humans,” says Rivera-Garibay. “However, there is still no solid evidence that seafood safety is threatened by microplasty. You urgently need a better understanding of the impact of microplasty on seafood.”