The fishermen of Puerto Morelos, on the Caribbean coast of Mexico, risks their lives every time they go out to sea to fish or dive for little men. Their reward depends on good luck, as the weather often makes it possible to get out, while on other days the hooks they throw back empty. These workers daily exhibit the best little men for the wealthy holidayists who come to the area, while they and their families, cut off many of the benefits of tourist development, gain fish full of microplasts.
Omar Oslet Rivera-Garibay, a researcher at the Institute of Marine Sciences and Limnology at the University of National Falls of In a recent study. He and his colleagues report that while members of the fishing crop of Pescadores de Puerto Morelos and sells precious seafood products to satisfy the appetites of tourists, they remain only with the fish trapped near the beaches of the city for their own consumption. It has little commercial value and is contaminated by small plastic fragments.
As part of their research, Rivera-Garibay and the team captured 424 fish out of 29 different species using the same methods as the cooperative partners. All were separated, and their digestive paths removed and examined. Contaminants were found in 57 percent of the fish, with more than a thousand microplastic particles recovered. The research noted that “fish trapped with hands in shallow waters near the coast had significantly more microplasts in their intestines than those trapped in deeper waters.”
Handline Fishing is a traditional method that has long been used in the shallow waters near Puerto Morelos. It consists simply of line and hook, and can be used to catch fish like a croaker, which can be eaten but has little business value. Two other methods are used to capture more valuable species. A line Rosario (“Rosary line”) consists of multiple lines with a series of branch hooks, and is used in deeper waters, about 20 nautical miles from the coast. It is used to capture Snapper, Grouper, and Pigfish. Langossto is captured by free divers with spears.
The least pressed fish, containing more microplasts, are taken home by fishermen to feed their families; The precious fish are sold to tourists here in the state of Quintana Roo, which receives more than 20 million visitors annually, who spend more than $ 20 billion. Quintana Roo is the Mexican state with the highest income of tourism, but that does not fall to the bottom of the population -Pyramid. Since 2020, 42.6 percent of the population in Puerto Morelos lived in poverty or extreme poverty, according to data from Mexico’s Secretariat of Economics.
Rivera-Garibay highlights the dangers of microplasts in fish. “These species are consumed by humans. Microplasts contain potentially dangerous chemicals, such as plastic monomers and additives, and they absorb toxic pollutants from the environment, such as harmful microbes and algae that can cause diseases in humans,” Rivera-Garibay says. “However, there is still no solid evidence that the safety of seafood is compromised by microplasts. A greater understanding of the effects of microplasts on seafood is urgently needed.”
