The State of the Oceans and You
Posted By Vladimir Soto on 25 June 2007
The world is warming up, the corals are bleaching and dying, fish stocks are being depleted soon beyond repair, and what on earth can WE do? We still need to get up in the morning to go to work, deal with the mortgage, pay attention to the kids and to a myriad of things that truly seem more pressing on our daily lives. And yet, if you're reading this chances are you do care about the ocean and the consequences of the seemingly unstoppable harm being done to it.
So what to do? Avoid the news? Buy more headache pills? Eat more chocolate?
I'm writing this to tell you about a few friends who got together to give a hand to the ocean and to a coastal community that makes a living from the ocean. Sure, those friends were lucky to come across such opportunity, but knowing such opportunities might be out there could help others find ways to feel useful in a manner that co-exists with the pressures of their every day lives.
This is the story of a project called paavima.org, and it is taking place right as you're reading this in southern Sri Lanka, in a village called Madiha, affected to a big extent not only by the tsunami of December 2004, but also by dire social and economic circumstances, which in turn keep feeding this loop of harmful behavior towards the ocean and the environment.
The project started in the fall of 2005, when after the tsunami a call for help was put out for dive instructors to give a hand. The call echoed nice and loud and was answered by this group of friends who eventually made their way to Sri Lanka from various corners of the world. I was very fortunate to be one of them.
The community we were asked to come and help is not one living in abject poverty, coastal communities rarely are. It's not one truly decimated by the tsunami, as there were many, although it was seriously hurt by it. However, it is a community in need of support to ensure the precarious way it earns a living does not continue to hurt it or the ocean habitats it depends on to live.
A large number of people in the southern most coast of the island make a living by collecting ornamental fish, the fish that are bought all over the world for aquariums. In fact, Sri Lanka became the first country to export aquarium fish in the 1930's, so there is a tradition that goes back generations. Unfortunately, as we found out as soon as we met the community, the local divers collect fish by diving without any prior training, poorly equipped, diving too long, too often and without much awareness to their health or that of the environment. It is alarmingly common to find cases of cutaneous decompression illness, or skin bends, and even fatal accidents are not rare.
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