Wherever Everto casts the net, instead of fish you will find plastic. The Venezuelan fisherman appeals to the citizen’s conscience before the tons of waste that every day fall into the Maracaibo lakein the state of Zulia, where the shores seem swampy and marine life struggles to survive.
Nobody dares to calculate how much garbage lies in this placethe largest lake in Latin America, but the reality is overwhelming and Everto certifies it with 43 years navigating these waters: “right now there is too much, there is a lot, we have plastic pollution, we have oil pollution (…) we have several contaminations that they have marginalized us fishermen,” he says.
The 51-year-old man easily removes plastic bags from the surface of the lake and, if he persists in his efforts, while sailing, he finds shoes, toys, bottles and countless other objects that were made useless by the millions of inhabitants of Maracaibo and that they ended up in the dump par excellence of the oil city.
Nor the wealth of oil in Venezuela that these waters contain, nor the century of enrichment that this territory has accumulated due to the exploitation of crude oil have prevented the motors of Everto’s and his companions’ boats from getting stuck easily, entangled with plastic.
Plastic waste on a beach in the town of Puntica e´Piedra, in Maracaibo (Venezuela). Photo EFE
200 kilos per hour
When it comes to plastic extracted from the shores of Lake Maracaibo, the El Zulia Recicla Foundation has an average: 60 volunteers who work for three hours they can collect about 600 kilogramsalthough there have been occasions when the figure doubled.
This is how Nicolino Bracho, the organization’s director of research, explains it to Efe, which since 2017 has been given the task of cleaning up this lagoon with sessions that take place every three months and to which volunteers have been added over the years.
All this waste, he insists, mainly harms the inhabitants of the lake towns and the indigenous communities that live in stilt houses, a scenario that would be worthy of tourist exploitation. if it weren’t for the stench that comes off the tons of garbage.
Plastic waste behind Parque La Marina, in Maracaibo (Venezuela). Photo EFE
In addition, the increased use of takeaway packaging has ended up degrading in these waters.in which marine species confuse polyethylene with foodand crabs, turtles and seabirds have died, their intestines atrophied by plastic waste.
“We are all responsible for this contamination (…) by having to separate these materials from the source and take them to collection centers or recycling sites,” adds the researcher, who highlights the initiatives of civil society and private companies to help clean up the lake
The causes
The Municipal Institute of the Environment (ICLAM) assures that the main cause of contamination of its iconic lake is the waste that “unconscious people throw” into the ravines, in a city with more than 100 systems of this type that are used as landfills by the crowd.
To address this problem, the manager of the ICLAM, Andrés Acosta, explains to Efe, the municipal authorities plan to place meshes in the ravines and thus prevent the exit of this waste into the bay. Until this plan is finalized, solid waste has already been removed from half of these drains.
A fisherman waits to dock his boat at a small, plastic-polluted pier in Santa Rosa de Agua. Photo EFE
For his part, biologist Lenín Parra, a professor at a center for environmental studies in the city, points out that the damage mainly affects the people whoe are exposed to high levels of pollution and, with it, diseases, but – he adds – it is a problem that threatens “all marine fauna”.
“Day by day the waste arrives; some travels kilometers” and ends up affecting the ventures of people who want to make environmental interpretation tours in an area of important historical value but, again, “no one would pay to go for a walk on tons of trash”.
Meanwhile, Everto, with an almost inert hope, makes an appeal: “let them get their hands on it, the lake gives a lot, it gives a lot of copper, fish, shrimp, the lake gives everything and they give nothing to the lake“.
EFE Agency