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VOInews, Petit-Saguenay: Piles of old tires, discarded cups, and cigarette butts litter the stunning Saguenay Fjord, a marine conservation area in eastern Canada that attracts belugas and other whales seeking a respite. The fjord, flanked by glacier-carved cliffs, connects to the Saint Lawrence River and is far from any major city. This marine sanctuary has held protected status for 26 years.

"It's one thing to gain protected area status, but how do we maintain it?" asked Canadian biologist Anne-Marie Asselin before diving to search for trash. Along with her team from the Blue Organization, she navigates the brackish waters of the fjord to document pollution in the area.

Their objectives are twofold: to identify the most common types of waste to target plastics that should be banned from sale, and to predict which banks are most at risk of pollution, particularly based on currents, to better target cleanup campaigns.

Using paddleboards, walking, or freediving, Asselin and her team collect various types of waste in the bay of the village of Petit-Saguenay. Under the blazing sun, Laurence Martel from the group sorts the waste by over 100 criteria, including brand, to ultimately hold producers accountable for the entire lifecycle of their products.

"The most common find is the cigarette butt; it is omnipresent," Martel said. She noted that a single cigarette butt can contaminate up to 500 liters of water due to the thousands of chemical compounds it contains.

Over five years, the team's research has revealed a worrying trend: the concentration of plastic waste is significantly increasing closer to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Atlantic, "suggesting a shift in waste from urban areas towards downstream parts of the river," she added. "Very often, the smallest plastics are the ones that pollute the most," Martel stated.

Waste breaks down into microplastics. These particles, often invisible to the naked eye, are made from polymers and other toxic compounds that vary from five millimeters to one thousandth of a millimeter. Microplastics are found throughout the marine food chain, particularly in invertebrates.

The Blue Organization captures and analyzes these "sentinel species," considered indicators of environmental health, during each cleanup operation. "If your mussels and your invertebrates are starting to suffer, that could be an indicator that the health of the ecosystem is also declining," said Miguel Felismino from McGill University in Montreal.

Seated on a catamaran, Felismino measured, photographed, and arranged mussel specimens, which he will also analyze in a laboratory to study the effects of microplastics. Using a homemade pump and a few pipes placed at the front of the boat, he also collected surface water and sediment from the seabed for his research.

The Blue Organization aims to produce a comprehensive picture of the plastic lifecycle in protected areas like the Saguenay-Saint Lawrence Marine Park. However, to protect these ecosystems, the solution is "also to trigger behavioral changes" in people, said biologist Asselin, who has called on artists to "raise awareness" about the situation.

This could involve creating music from natural sounds or producing a "literary translation" of scientific research, Asselin said. "With climate change, the soundscapes associated with certain territories are set to evolve," said one such artist, Emilie Danylewick, before plunging her hydrophone into the water to record the sounds. Danylewick added that her work is a "way to preserve the current soundscape memory of the territory."

Source: AFP