Faunal Mortality in Caribbean

In last June-July the news were filled with pictures about Caribbean beaches covered with dead and dying algae. In addition to the beaches, the algae covered the water near them. The large amount of beaching algae has become a yearly problem in 2010’s. Although the aesthetic problems in the beaches (sight and smell) are a major nuisance for areas living on tourism, what happens in coastal waters may be even more alarming for ecosystem health. The decaying algae cause high ammonium and sulphide concentrations in water, and a marked reduction in its oxygen concentration. All these changes are harmful enough to be lethal to large numbers of macrofauna. Especially fish are found dead in large numbers. While the results from last July-August are not yet available, Rodriguez-Martinez et al. have reported the situation in 2018 in Marine Pollution Bulletin 146 (2019) 201–205.

It is probable that this problem is yet another consequence of ongoing climate change. This is an example of effects influencing economies drastically, and the problems are not caused by countries suffering from economic problems. For this reason one needs environmental globalism, the nationalistic populism only worsens the situation. Soon the populist will not have a tourist resort to go to, even if he had saved enough money for it by not accepting the need to do any environmental actions.