Oman’s decision to join clean seas drive hailed

His opinion was echoed by Dr Hussain Al Masroori, assistant professor at Sultan Qaboos University’s College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences.

“The biggest source of pollution that harms marine welfare is actually the degraded and abandoned fishing gear,” he revealed. “This causes pollution in the sea and increases the mortality of fish and marine mammals. Some of this gear stay afloat on the water, where they are sometimes eaten by fish and marine mammals such as turtles and dolphins. Other gear sink to the bottom of the sea, where they get entangled with coral reefs, and also harm demersal fish that swim or feed near the bottom of the ocean.

“For example, turtles eat jellyfish, but floating material such as plastic bags actually look like jellyfish, and turtles will go and hunt these down and eat them, thus eating these bags,” observed Al Masroori. “We also have fish who eat these toxic materials, and then we eat these fish, so in the end, this is really harmful for us.”

He also stressed the need for stronger community awareness programmes, so that residents in Oman would understand the value of protecting the environment.

“We need very strong community awareness to educate the people about the importance of not just the sea and marine wildlife, but about terrestrial components on the earth as well,” he added. “Community awareness is very important, because it is vital that we respect the environment, and not just throw garbage anywhere, otherwise it will bounce back at us. Anything that we put in the environment will come back to us.”