The experience gained from 20 years teaching the subject of Marine Pollution at the Faculty of Marine Sciences of the University of Vigo, helped Ricardo Beiras, professor of Ecology and researcher in the Ecotox group of the CIM-UVigo, to realize the need for an updated text, in line with the study that is currently being done on marine pollution, based on multidisciplinary approaches and combining chemical and biological techniques. As a result of this evidence, four years later Marine Pollution: Sources, Fate and Effects of Pollutants in Coastal Ecosystems was published, “a work of much greater magnitude than any of my hundred or so previous publications”, explains Beiras, who dedicated one of those four years entirely to the book, “thanks to a sabbatical granted to me by the university and for which I take this opportunity to thank”.
The volume, prepared by order of Elsevier, after the project was accepted by this and other publishers, addresses in a first part the pollutants by type: nutrients, hydrocarbons, metals, fecal microorganisms… identifying the sources and destination in the sea. In the second part, the effects of pollutants from an ecotoxicological point of view on marine organisms are discussed and in the third, “the most innovative”, assures the professor, the methods of monitoring marine pollution that have been implemented by the most advanced countries and international institutions that monitor the quality of the oceans are described.
An approachable text, with two levels of reading
The professor of Ecology at the University of Vigo assures that the volume reflects the fruit of “many years of work and professional activity in the international context, regularly participating in working groups in Brussels or Copenhagen. In fact, some of those colleagues from other countries congratulated me for taking the lead in this project, given that, strange as it may seem, there were no books of this nature,” assures Beiras.
In addition to a first level of reading, which is useful for students who want to get started in pollution, reviewing the basic concepts and including recommended readings in each chapter, designed for non-experts, the volume has strong support of technical citations for specialists, where advanced users (professionals responsible for managing the marine environment) can contrast the aspects covered in more depth. “The challenge was to make a text accessible without losing scientific rigor, and this is not always easy when dealing with topics that can be media-driven and that some media outlets disclose with little rigor, such as plastics or oil spills,” laments the professor.
“We are lucky that the seas are ecosystems with such a capacity for regeneration”
Far from paternalistic formulations, the book tries, according to its author, to provide readers with technical tools to draw their own conclusions “on the basis of the only ways of achieving new knowledge that science accepts, which are observation and experiment”, Beiras details. However, from the study of different episodes of pollution, the professor draws a conclusion: “we are lucky that the seas are ecosystems with such a capacity for regeneration. That is why, despite the aggressions they constantly suffer from our side, they still maintain their wealth and their productivity. Life began in the sea, the sea continues to be the most diverse ecosystem and we should never again consider it the dumping ground for our waste”, concludes Beiras.
Source: DUVI
