By Noimot Olayiwola
Staff Reporter
 
An international marine life expert has warned that “unnoticeable” small oil spills as well as residue from desalination plants, if left unattended, could have chronic effects on marine life and their natural habitats in the busy Gulf waters.
The Gulf region is considered one of the richest in natural resources boasting of a unique ecosystem in which fish, birds, mammals and many different types of plants thrive.
“There is a huge traffic in the Gulf waters and there is bound to be exposure to pollution. There are probably many little spills that we don’t see or pay attention to, and if it occurs everyday such little spills will have a chronic effect on the marine life,” US-based Research Planning president Jacqueline Michel (pictured) told Gulf Times yesterday.
She was speaking on the sidelines of a training workshop on ‘Natural Resource Damage Assessment’ organised by the Marine Emergency Mutual Aid Centre (MEMAC) in co-operation with the Ministry of Environment.
The aim of the workshop was to assess the effects of pollution on marine life by providing the participants with the right tools and knowledge of how to assess the problems or the extent of damage and how best to restore the ecological mangroves and nurseries.
“The greatest impacts of pollution or oil spillage are on those areas that are directly open to exposure like the mangroves, sea grasses and the sensitive habitats of some marine animals such as the sea turtles, dugongs and diving birds,” Michel said stressing the need to protect the animals’ habitats by creating buffer zones.
“There is the need to ensure that people don’t pick turtle eggs and efforts should be made to continuously clear the debris deposited along the beaches in order to help little sea animals such as baby turtles or little birds which get slowed down by the debris in their dash for the beach,” Michel said.
“Restoration of damaged natural habitat, which took millennia to develop, cannot be expected to be easy or quick, particularly in the sea where it is extremely difficult to control the surrounding environment and the knock-off effects to other habitats,” she said.
Michel said for most habitats, natural recovery of the damage cannot be improved or speeded up by human intervention, except by reducing the influence of other human activities such as fishing, coastal development and discharges that may be slowing natural recovery.