Europe's Baltic Sea:
A vulnerable ecosystem
With their heads bobbing out of holes in the winter ice, six grey
seals are pioneering the re-population of their species along Poland's
Baltic Sea coast.
"We don't know all the reasons why seals vanished from Poland's
Baltic coast," says Iwona Pawliczka, a biologist at Gdansk University's
marine research station on Poland's Hel peninsula.
"A century ago there were about 100,000 grey seals in the Baltic. In
the 1980's their population fell to 2-3,000," she explains, adding that
hunting and chemical pollutants that rendered females infertile
decimated populations.
Baltic Sea’s ecosystem - Courtesy Google |
While colonies in the northern Baltic near Sweden are now about
20,000-strong, Pawliczka says just a few dozen seals, most of them
offspring bred at the Hel station, live along Poland's entire Baltic
coast.
Female seals Ania, Eva, Agata who arrived in Hel from Estonia, and
Unda Marina from Sweden are now all pregnant with a new generation.
The fate of the Harbour Porpoise, a small dolphin once common across
the Baltic, is even more precarious. Hunting, fishnets as well as
chemical and noise pollution have all but wiped it out. With experts
estimating that fewer than 250 remain in Baltic waters, in 2008 they
were declared a critically endangered species.
Encircled by nine countries, including Estonia, Denmark, Finland,
Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Sweden, the Baltic has an
estimated 16 million people living along its shores.
Experts note that as a relatively small, shallow and enclosed sea it
has a very limited ability to flush out pollutants into the larger
waters of the North Sea, making it an extremely vulnerable ecosystem.
Senior leaders from Baltic states are to meet Wednesday in Helsinki
to save what organisers say is one of the world's most threatened seas.
A computer screen glowing with satellite tracking of vessels across
the Baltic reveals intense traffic, with in excess of an estimated 2,000
ships on its waters on any given day.
"We're lucky we've never had a major fuel spill on the Baltic and it
is being precisely monitored to keep it that way," says Port of Gdynia
harbour master Andrzej Kaleta.
Several flights out of Gdynia each week are focused on finding
contamination from shipping in Polish territorial waters.
However, older environmental hazards are surfacing. Last week,
Sweden's SVT public television aired allegations that Russia dumped
chemical weapons and radioactive waste off the shores of the Swedish
Baltic island of Gotland between 1991-94.
Controversy has also raged over the possible negative environmental
impact of the NordStream natural gas pipeline Russia and Germany plan to
build across the Baltic Sea floor.
But according to University of Gdansk marine biologist Professor
Maciej Wolowicz, a complex organic process sucking the oxygen out of the
Baltic is perhaps the greatest hazard.
Oxygen-depletion caused by a process scientists term "eutrophication"
occurs when an overdose of nutrients - including nitrates and phosphates
from farm fertilisers and sewage - is washed into the sea.
These spark excessive algae growth which left unconsumed, lead to
oxygen-depleted areas where no marine life can exist.
"It's like a 'desertification' of the Baltic Sea bed and it is
relatively wide-spread," Wolowicz says.
He insists education is key to reversing the process.
"Law and regulations are essential, but if people have no or very
limited awareness of how their actions affect the environment,
regulations alone can't work," he insists.
Pioneering gravel extraction in the Baltic and planning a massive
wind farm in an area where Swedish and Polish territorial waters meet,
Mieczyslaw Twardowski says his company, Baltex, has no choice but to
meet international environmental norms if it hopes to do business.
"The environmental impact of our activities is strictly monitored and
as we are operating in an area requiring approval from Sweden, it is
critical for our impact to be within acceptable norms," he told AFP
recently.
AFP |