As Bioinvasion docks at our wharfs

A new age global threat to biodiversity and 
Kerala's vulnerability

Picture courtesy: cruiseandmarritime.com

Some three hundred years back Kerala had a history of welcoming European sailors who did the adventurous ocean explorations to establish commercial ties with the bountiful Indian state. It is history that in due course, those commercial objectives gave way for quest for power. Eventually, an unblemished India was crushed in the hands of oppressive foreign rulers. Peace and nonviolence were sharp weapons for a Mahatma who led a compassionate struggle that ultimately won undeniable freedom for the country. Today, the country's shorelines witness yet another invasion called 'bioinvasion', which has made native scientists vigilant.   

Today it is much easier for the macro as well as micro flora and fauna of a particular place on this earth to invade other localities regardless of any barrier of distance and time. This sort of invasion is called bioinvasion. This new age invasion has become a matter of concern for entire world. Bioinvasion can cause subtle to serious impacts on the biotas. Ultimately there will be serious reflections in qualities of the air, soil and the sea.

Ballast water
Bioinvasion effected through the ballast water carried by ships sailing between continents, is an example. Well, what is this ballast water? Though it is a kind of water, it contains heavy environmental issues. Now just tune your mind a little bit to be a ship engineer. In order to keep its balance, ships use to fill seawater in large containers within them. At times the seawater is drained out for the same purpose. Hence there is frequent filling of seawater from one place and draining away of the same at a distant place. So what? Well, such large quantities of water measuring about 2,00,000 m³ , is a haven of innumerous ocean organisms. Thus the ballast water contains heterogenous biota including micro to macro organisms, many of which will be endemic or parasitic in nature. Definitely it is not the fault of those innocent creatures to travel and get deported in a strange shore. All this happens because of man’s commercial needs.

Picture courtesy: portvision.com

Majority of them die for not being able to survive in the thoroughly new aquatic environment. Thus ballast water contributes its share to the biodiversity destruction. Instead, there will be certain flora and fauna which find the new place so rejuvenating. As a result they flourish prolifically, leading to the elimination of the native species. Ballast water turns a disaster when it contains harmful elements, precarious pathogens for example.

India, Kerala and...
Don’t take this kind of a bioinvasion as something told only for people of faraway places. In fact, bioinvasion can have its effect anywhere in the world for seas connect continents and globalization has only multiplied ocean logistics and commerce. Even a landlocked country like Ethiopia or Switzerland cannot elude from cruise of bioinvasion for they also use nearby seaports for their imports and exports. 
In recent times a number of alien species were identified along Kerala’s shores. These included varieties of seaweeds, bryozoans, mollusks and ascidian. Thecacera Pennigera is a mollusk which is endemic to shores of Atlantic, but today, a common organism for Indian shores.  Studies have found enough evidence that the Atlantic mollusk was transported to Indian ocean by the ballast waters. Leave alone this petite mollusk, there are about ten thousand of organisms being distributed world over by way of ships.

Thecacera Pennigera
Picture courtesy: seaslugforum.net

In every nook and corner of the world, it has been globalization soaring with flying colour. Climate change and globalization are the pair of ubiquitous words today. Marine routes are witnessing more traffic. Import and export of goods world over have increased ten times than it was some twenty years before. In this bustling scenario, thousands of organizms are concomitantly transported helter-skelter between the seven seas, not for their mistake. This has eventually made the survival shaky for them as well as for thousands of other species.

Kochi, Vizhinjam
Kerala has two major seaports including the ‘Queen of Arabian Sea’, Kochi; and  Vizhinjam International Sea Port off the capital city. Nor far away from Vizhinjam, Kulachal in Tamil Nadu is also earmarked for a port construction. That means 3 major ports within some 300 kms, which will find the issue of ballast water posing severe challenge to our biodiversity conservation efforts.

Ballast water must not hinder the emergence of seaports. Instead, while building ports, prudent mechanism for handling ballast water must also get due place.  Many developed nations have come forward with futuristic legal and physical measures to manage the issue. Here, to plug the flow of environmental issues, Vizhinjam and Kochi must set successful Indian models. Neglecting the truth will lead to unbridled invasion by alien flora and fauna leading to the extinction of major portion of the native biodiversity. Then the story of colonization will get a dramatic twist. Earlier if it was men who invaded and ruled, today the invaders and sufferers will be tens and thousands of aquatic organisms. To bridle the menace of bioinvasion, we may require proactive Mahatmas among planners, implementers and scientists.  

- Akhila S. Nair

Gonu, a climate pickpocket

The severe cyclone that has hit the coast of Oman and put the shores of Persian Gulf under sheer threat after claiming several lives, has become a pickpocket who had fled with considerable part of Kerala's monsoon rains. Even while typing this note, Thiruvananthapuram, the Capital city of this southern State of India remains hot and dry. Whereas June 8 is never supposed to be a day of sunshine as it is.

June, for Keralites, is a month that finds monsoon in its full vigour. There has been a custom belief that when schools re-open after summer vacation, monsoon showers will be there for sure, to wet the students who march to school and back, wearing the newest of their uniforms and bags. But this didn’t' happen even after a week of beginning the so-called monsoon month.

This late monsoon is meteorologically attributed to the formation of the big cyclone, Gonu. Gonu was described as the strongest tropical cyclone on record in the Arabian Sea. If the monsoon is already too late to cool the southern shores of Kerala, Gonu has swiftly spelled catastrophic effects taking the lives of many along the coasts of Oman, U.A.E., Pakistan and Iran. The cyclone had double the speed of express trains running in Kerala, i.e., about 240km/hour.

The deep depression over the East Central Arabian Sea, that has obviously unshackled Gonu, has badly affected the progress of Indian monsoon, if to go by the met reports.

India Meteorological Department's (IMD) Deputy Director General (Weather Forecasting), A.B.Majumdar (मजुमदार) has said during a press brief that the depression could move along the North-Westward and delay the further movement of much-longed monsoon.

Any way, an advanced and augmented monsoon is the best thing for the sweating Indian farmers to hope. Good monsoon means better yields for cotton, soybean, groundnut and rice.

A recent statement by the IMD said that the monsoon had lashed the coastal Kerala on May 28. But where actually the showers are? People of Thiruvananthapuram ask. If monsoon was in its full stream, media here would have already been flooded with news of flood-related destructions. But what floods in the Kerala media now is the resurgence of chickun gunya and other communicable diseases. Today alone 11 persons lost their life owing to fever in the southern district of Pathanamthitta. Another startling scene is the unusually fierce sea erosion along the coasts of the State.

The global devils of warming and climatic changes already have their share on the natural settings of Kerala. It seems, amid this chaos, Gonu like a pickpocket, has taken away a good part of the State's monsoon rains too. And quite pathetically Keraliltes, particularly the dwellers of its Capital city, join their State bird Hornbill and gaze skyward, thirsty of rain.

-Prepared by K.P.Sivakumar after observing trends in the climate of Thiruvananthapuram.

A humble effort begins...

Here begins our humble effort. A passionate endeavour to express to the fullest power of language known to us, about our dreams and aspirations on Mother Nature. We would write what we see, hear and listen. We would share what resounds in our conscience. EcoMagazine should be a fortnightly - or else it should have at least two insertions a month - we sanguinely hope. With great expectations, EcoMagazine starts its journey from Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum), Kerala, INDIA!

We are: K.P.Sivakumar having a mind inclined to the environmental cuases and Akhila S. Nair a Research Scholar with the Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Kerala.