Editorial, Geoscience Education Email: [email protected] Once again the team of Geoscience Education (GE), coordinated by Dr. Subhronil Mondal, Ishita Das and M.Sc. first year students of the Department of Geology, University of Calcutta has taken the lead to clean another famous beach of Orissa – Chandipur as their continuous effort to make our beaches clean as it used to be. The Chandipur beach is a very hot destination for tourists from all over India. Every year this beach conducts the famous Chandipur Beach Festival for three days. More than one lakh people visit this beach during the festival time. Moreover, this beach also hosts many endangered species including the red crab (Ocypode spp.), horseshoe crabs, and sea turtles, along with hundreds of exotic marine organisms. Unfortunately, for the last few decades, the beach has become a nightmare for nature lovers, and the organisms, as the beach has become a heap of enormous garbage. This time the GE team of more than 30 members visited the place and cleaned a portion of the beach just before the beach festival. This initiative also documented the nature of pollutants/waste which were scattered along the beach. It also enabled the team to understand which factors/sources are the main culprits behind the nasty nature of beach pollution (Figure-1). GE team observed that the beach was infested with non-degradable items like plastics of various formats such as packets of various sizes, bottles, cups and glasses, and ice-cream cups, among many other degradable wastes, like casks of coconut, burnt wood, etc. A quantification of an area of about 500 square meters reveals the following data (Figure 1, 2): The results suggest that the waste concentration is quite high in the beach, which can also be seen from the figures. The GE team is planning to use this database to document the source of these waste producers, so that the actual culprits can be identified, educated, and trained. More works need to be conducted to better train local people and continue this awareness initiative.
Let’s make our beaches clean like it used to be and enjoy the beauty of nature. Let’s work together and make a team. If you think you can help us with your ideas and views please write us at [email protected]
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India has a vast coastline of as long as of almost 6000 km exposed along the eastern and western parts. This hugely extended region, where three major water bodies – Bay of Bengal at the east, Indian Ocean at the south, and Arabian Sea at the west – meet, hosts a diverse coastal environmental set up incorporating a huge marine and coast biodiversity. Apart from this environment-biota assemblage, this vast region also hosts a great number of sandy beaches, many of which are quite famous. For example, Gokarna at Karnataka, Kovalam beach at Kerala, Marina beach at Tamil Nadu, Gopalpur beach at Orissa, Rama Krishna Beach at Andhra Pradesh etc. are famous tourist spots. Associated with these beaches, a huge population of people make their livelihood related to tourism. However, most of us, even the locals, forget that once the beauties of those beaches are gone, the entire tourism industry will collapse. It is therefore extremely important to conserve the surrounding of these beaches for our own as well as the survival of Mother Nature. Surprisingly, no big initiative has yet been taken by the local or Indian government for cleaning, maintaining, and developing of those beaches. A group of paleontologists and ecologists from the Department of Geology, University of Calcutta have decided to take the first step of this initiative and used their limited time and resources to initiate cleaning of a beach at Orissa. A total of five M.Sc. graduate and PhD students – Ms. Hindolita Chakraborty, Mr. Sandip Saha, Mr. Sayantan Sinha, Ms. Sahana Dey, and Mr. Krishanu Chatterjee – along with other members of the Department of Geology, University of Calcutta used their hands to clean a heap of plastic wastes dumped on a beach and gathered those together and placed them in a nearby trash dump bin. Moreover, they also supplied 40 micron degradable plastics to the nearby vendors selling different products to the tourists and requested them to ask the tourists to throw any waste inside the plastic. In fact, the team saw that it worked partially and at least 3 out of 10 tourists listened to the campaign and thrown theirs used wastes inside the plastic bag. Although this achievement is limited, this is just an initiative and should be carried forward with proper panning, funding, and care. The team is planning to make collaboration with other departments and local people to start this awareness initiative. Let’s make our beaches clean like it used to be and enjoy the beauty of nature. Let’s work together and make a team. If you think you can help us with your ideas and views please write us at [email protected]. |
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