Updated on June 16, 2019
Climate Strike: Activity in Sorrento
In the 24th of may people of all around the world joined the World Climate Strike. According to event organizers Fridays for Future, over 1664 cities across 125 countries registered strike actions. To these numbers, we have also to add the small events that weren’t registered.
We could not let this important day go away without doing something and, as we had a special help of our past MARElinis and friends, we move our “5 Impacts Table” to Piazza Veniero, in Sorrento. We started organising all of the space for the activity, trying to catch some attentions on the street. While something was happening on the spot, in the main street of Sorrento, some Builders, Fishermen, the Global Warming, Invasive species, … were trying to invite people to join this activity. In reality, we were just preparing our restaurant under the sea!
A table was prepared with some marine organisms on it. After that, the customers were welcomed to enter and seat by a sad Chef, later on you are going to understand why he was sad…The people seated and the show started!
“Welcome to our restaurant “Rifrutti di Mare”. Now, you are not a person anymore, but the marine animal that I gave to you.”
“What do you want to order? Hum… Ms. Turtle, I think that you would like to have a plate full of jellyfishes.” – the waiter arrived.
“Sorry, but unfortunately there is some plastic bags mixed with your food, that we can not separate.”
And a sea current full of marine litter and no more clean and fresh water arrived to the table…
With this marine litter problem, we also have another biggest problem that are impacting our oceans in an extreme velocity… A warm current, at the same time with a cold current, arrived!
“I’m sorry, but we don’t know what is happening with this weather, sometimes it’s really warm, and we have to move to colder places, other times it’s really cold and we move again. But, in reality, we don’t have colder places, as we had some years ago, anymore. The percentage of ice is decreasing and me, as I’m an Orca, I don’t know where I can go, where I can eat, my life just changed. Or I will find a solution, or I’ll die.”
But… this climate change is also good to move species, species that went out from their places and go to invade another. Nowadays, the problematic of invasive species is really related with the changes on the temperature and the capacity that those species, usually stronger than the endemic ones, have to invade an entire ecosystem and put the others in troubles. Some of them can take a ride in the marine litter, that is moving with the currents, an easy way to reach new places. – a Spanish Lobster arrived to invade the Italian ecosystem.
“Hola! El clima aquí es tan bueno. Tengo tanta comida a disposición que puedo alimentar a mí ya toda mi familia. Voy a invitarlos a mudarse aquí.” (Hi! The weather here is so good. There is a lot of food for me and for all of my family. I’m going to invite them to leave Spain and come to leave here.)
After the whole Spanish family invaded Italy, the Fishermen found a new food resource and started to throw nets everywhere to make a lot of money. However, they fished not only the invasive Spanish Lobster, but also a lot species that have been signalised in danger of extinction, as tuna and dolphins, for example.
“I’m going to be rich and give food to all of my family. I know that the Spanish Lobster is not enough good, but with some illegal captures, I can make a looooot of money! And, dolphins?! Who cares about them?! They are just beautiful and nice for tourism. Furthermore, with this money, I can build a luxury house on the sea!” – the Builders men arrived.
“Sorry Octopus, Anemone, Barnacle and Shark, you have to move from here because my client paid me a huge amount of money to built a luxury hotel. Ah… and say to your friends, after this, I’m going 5 nautical miles out from here because important people found a place where we can extract a big quantity of petroleum. But, I know that you are not going to have enough time to find a new home and move, so… Sorry again, but this is our last conversation!”
All of the 5 IMPACTS (Marine Litter, Climate Change, Invasive Species, Overfishing and Habitat Destruction) arrived together to the sea restaurant creating a giant chaos! It’s important to remember, the impacts on the oceans don’t act independently, they are together creating these chaos and, sometimes, they unite their forces and make even greater damage (cumulative effect).
Nowadays, there are an increasing number of people that are helping the environment combating these problems, at least, the problems that people can help. – some Special people came on the scene and the Chef started to remember the old times.
“I remember when I could give to my clients all the food that they want, without being disturbed during their meal. The currents brought fresh and clean water, with a lot of organisms without plastic, the weather was more certain, we knew when was summer and when was winter…” – the table started to be clean, the Chef started to smiling and the sadness went away.
“Mrs. Fisherman, you have to have more attention with the animals that you fish. We now that the resources in the oceans are changing, but we can find some solutions to you don’t lost money. We know that you know the sea better than no one, we can bring people to you, as a guided tour, and you can explain your job and how the oceans changed from your childhood until now.”
The Fisherman started to change the way how he was fishing and with his new activity, has enough money for his family. The Builders men started to realise that something was changing and they feel the pressure to also change their activity. They looked to their plan and to the map and found some places where they can build structures for renewable energy, to transform the energy of the waves into electrical energy, but also some structures to help these Special people cleaning the marine litter that are invading our oceans.
These Special people is known by MARElinis and they did or do part of an EVS program called Project M.A.R.E. with the main aim of protecting the environment involving other people and try to explain them the importance of the activities that they are doing since 2013 until now.
If you could be part of this activity that we made in Sorrento, we hope that you enjoyed it and we promise that this one was just the beginning! If you couldn’t be there, in our facebook you can have an updated of the activities that we are going to do.
