Ivo Knežević, a fisherman from Ulcinj, says that he is often amazed by the amount of waste he sees in the open sea, a few kilometers from the mouth of the Bojana River.
"Previously, we witnessed that waste of various kinds was after a strong southerly wind. But it's not like that anymore. There is plastic everywhere," he points out.
The situation worsens with the first autumn rains, when torrents and streams begin to work and bring waste discarded in dried-up riverbeds to the sea.
When a supermarket bag or a plastic bottle is not thrown into the container, trouble begins for those who live in and by the sea.
"We end up eating the plastic bag that we didn't throw away properly. In other words, we are killing ourselves," Knežević claimed in an interview with the Center for Investigative Journalism, BIRN and Monitor (CIN-CG/BIRN/Monitor).
Divers from Ulcinj also state that the seabed is increasingly difficult to distinguish from the landfill on land.
"There is almost no point where I have dived in our underwater world without finding discarded garbage. These are piles of plastic bottles, cans, chairs, and even truck rims," says well-known Ulcinj diver Adi Karamanaga for CIN-CG/BIRN/Monitor.
He is convinced that the threat from plastic is becoming more pronounced every day, while the fish stock is getting smaller:
"I don't think there is a single organism in the sea that has not been touched by plastic. All this is dangerously ruining our reputation as a beautiful tourist destination and our sea as a source of quality fishery products, endangering us and our local communities, which crucially depend on the sea," adds Karamanaga.
Domestic and foreign waste
Precisely because of the amount of plastic in it, an international team of experts in a study published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin declared the Adriatic one of the three most polluted European seas (after the northeastern part of the Mediterranean and the Celtic Sea). Waste comes from about four million people who live along the Adriatic coast, and that number increases almost six times during the tourist season.
The most waste that ends up in the Mediterranean per capita comes from Montenegro! As much as eight kilograms per year, according to data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
Environmental activist Azra Vuković states that 80-90 percent of waste in the Adriatic is plastic.
"The lifetime of single-use plastic is 20 minutes, while it takes much longer to break down, if it ever does. Here, first of all, we are talking about bags, glasses, bottles, cigarette butts, fishing nets and accessories that reach the water in different ways, creating a big problem for organisms that live in the sea, but also those on land," Vuković told CIN- CG/BIRN/Monitor.
Judging by the packaging, most of the waste arrives from Albania, via the Bojana River. There is also a lot of domestic waste, because Bojana flows from Lake Skadar, which mostly belongs to Montenegro. Each resident of Montenegro, according to data from the organization Zero Waste Montenegro, uses and discards more than 600 plastic bags per year on average, which are not recycled and end up in nature or landfills.
"Only in the hinterland of Velika plaža, without Ada Bojana, 22 illegal landfills have been mapped where, in addition to construction and bulky waste, there is also plastic. This threatens to cause permanent damage to the development of tourism on the Ulcinj Riviera," says Vuković.
Although the sea is an extremely valuable resource, Montenegro does not have an elaborate model for monitoring and disposing of waste in the sea. And in the latest report of the European Commission on Montenegro, waste management was evaluated as an area where no progress was made.
The Minister for Sustainable Development and Tourism Pavle Radulović, who in the meantime resigned and left the Government due to the corruption scandal in his inspection, loudly announced the ban on the use of plastic bags. From MORT, however, it was announced that a new national waste management plan for the period up to 2026 will be drawn up next year.
Since the beginning of this year, the adoption of a new law on waste management has been announced. This should now be the obligation of the new government and the Assembly, as, for example, the Croatian Parliament adopted a series of conclusions on microplastics in the environment last year.
Montenegro undertook, within the framework of Chapter 27, to recycle 50 percent of plastic, paper, metal and glass waste. The country intends to ensure the recycling of at least 70 percent of non-hazardous construction waste, in order to meet the final standards of the most demanding European chapter. That's what it says in the Draft Action Plan for meeting the final benchmarks in Chapter 27 - Environment and Climate Change, which was up for public discussion until the end of August. Montenegro should fulfill these conditions by December 31, 2030.
"In recent years, plastic waste pollution has become more and more prevalent, which puts additional pressure on the marine ecosystem", it was stated previously and in the last publicly published annual report of the Agency for Nature and Environmental Protection of Montenegro for 2018.
Along with MORT and the Public Company for the Management of Marine Resources, as well as coastal local governments and the Directorate for Inspection Affairs, the Agency is most responsible for the current situation in the Montenegrin sea and inland waters.
Landfills at the bottom of the sea
Research by scientists from the countries bordering the Adriatic and Ionian Seas (Slovenia, Italy, Croatia, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Greece), within the project WELCOME ("WatEr LandsCapes sustainability through reuse of Marine litter"), which is financed from European Union (EU) funds, showed that there are an average of 670 pieces of plastic per square kilometer in the Adriatic, which is considered a relatively high density of waste.
As much as 90 percent of items from waste are made of artificial materials. Analysis of one ton of garbage on the beaches and in the sea shows that slightly more than half of it is plastic, 30 percent wood, 10 percent metals, and six percent textiles.
"Litter in the sea represents one of the biggest threats to the marine ecosystem of the Mediterranean with environmental, economic, security, health and cultural impact", says Dr. Milica Mandić, senior research associate at the Institute of Marine Biology in Kotor, for CIN-CG/BIRN/Monitor.
Reminding that the Adriatic Sea is a semi-enclosed basin with weak seawater currents and long retention of water masses, which makes it vulnerable and very sensitive to persistent pollution, she points out that the very specific and partially protected area of the Boka Kotor Bay is particularly at risk.
"The biggest culprits for everything in it are the local population, tourists and, in part, inadequate waste management on land. About 80 percent of the waste that is under the surface of the sea in Boka originates from the land. Estimates are that there are 160-250 kilograms of waste per square kilometer in the area of the bay, and 40-80 kilograms in the area of the open sea of the Montenegrin coast," says Mandić.
She claims that the waste on the beaches is actually only the "tip of the iceberg" compared to the amount that is under the sea surface.
Dr. Pero Tutman, an expert at the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries from Split, tells CIN-CG/BIRN/Monitor that about 70 percent of the waste that reaches the sea from land ends up on the seabed and accumulates there for years beyond human reach.
"Those quantities increase on an annual basis, and although they are not known to us, they are certainly not negligible. The impact on marine organisms is to the greatest extent through entanglement (eg lost fishing tools, plastic bags, etc.), and ingestion and intake into the digestive system. Larger marine organisms such as mammals (seals, dolphins and whales) and turtles, as well as seabirds, are particularly exposed to this," emphasizes Dr. Tutman.
The less plastic, the bigger the problems
Plastic in the sea practically never disappears: it just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces and enters all the pores of the natural environment. Microplastics (plastic particles less than five millimeters) have been found in all types of marine organisms. The problem with microplastic is that it can absorb a large amount of heavy metals, viruses and bacteria.
This problem in the Adriatic was first pointed out in the DeFishGear project when it was determined that in the stomachs of seven out of 10 fish in our sea there are pieces of microplastic! So, while we eat Adriatic specialties, we ourselves consume plastic.
Research has shown that plastic particles present in the heart and human brain are linked to the risk of brain cancer, and that exposure of animals to plastic can lead to inflammation, infertility and cancer.
In the Institute in Kotor, they conducted a study based on analyzes of the stomach contents of five different, commercially important fish species, sardines, flounder, flounder, mullet and sole.
"It has been shown that parts of macroplastics, over 5 millimeters in size, are found in all the mentioned species, with lower or higher abundance. "Out of a total of 235 analyzed individuals, macroplastics were found in every fourth," says Dr. Mandić.
Bags of "treats" for sea turtles
One of the most endangered species in the Adriatic are sea turtles. A recent study published in the journal Current Biology found that plastic bags smell like a tasty treat to turtles because of the bacteria and algae that accumulate on them. Scientists have offered sea turtles several types of scents. The turtles reacted almost identically to the smell of food and a nylon bag, which was previously submerged in water, according to the magazine.
"Research conducted until 2011 showed that of the 54 found dead loggerhead turtles (the most dominant species of sea turtle in the Adriatic), 35 percent had waste found in their digestive organs. "Unfortunately, the more such waste there is, the more endangered sea turtles are," says Dr. Tutman.
One of the most endangered and largest species of sea turtle in the world, which rarely enters the Adriatic Sea, the seven-striped loggerhead (Dermochelys coriacea), got entangled in a fishing net near Valdanos a few years ago, but was rescued by the patrol officer of the Municipality of Ulcinj, Hajrudin-Dino Šata .
Sea turtles in the sea, by the way, perform so-called bioturbation, causing sediment mixing and nutrient cycling, thereby affecting the preservation of the stability of the complex marine ecosystem.
Plastic chaos on the beaches
In the Public Enterprise for the Management of Marine Assets, which often organizes beach clean-up actions, they told CIN-CG/BIRN/Monitor that, according to the analyses, the dominant waste is plastic packaging.
"On all beaches, it was established that the biggest problem is plastic waste, with a share of over 60 percent both in number and weight. Of the total number of pieces of waste collected, the largest share belongs to cigarette butts and filters. This is followed by plastic pieces 2,5-50 cm in size, plastic packaging, foils, parts of candy and food packaging, as well as plastic caps and lids," says Dr. Mandić.
Morski dobr announced that the Montenegrin government is preparing a monitoring program, which includes waste in the sea, "all with the aim of determining the good environmental condition of the Adriatic Sea".
"The new legislation must bring significant improvement and better efficiency of local companies responsible for waste collection and disposal, but also the development of mechanisms in Montenegro for recycling plastic, glass, metal and other packaging waste, as well as mechanisms for waste control and reduction in manufacturing such as banning single-use plastic products. All of this will contribute to the reduction of waste on beaches and other public areas," Miljan Živković from the Public Enterprise for the Management of Marine Assets told CIN-CG/BIRN/Monitor.
Nevertheless, Dr. Mandić believes that the situation is quite worrying, "especially considering the fact that not much is being done to solve the problem, that there are no legal regulations that deal with the issue of waste in the sea, and that there are not enough national funds for fundamental scientific research that would treat the issue of the impact of the accumulation and transfer of waste on the health of marine organisms, and consequently of people".
Considering that waste in the sea exceeds national borders and that, depending on currents, winds and the like, it can travel significant distances in a short time, Dr. Tutman says that we need to talk about this problem and its solution and work in coordination with other countries "with which we share the Adriatic".
The ministers of environmental protection of Croatia, Montenegro and Albania agreed at the beginning of 2018 in Dubrovnik to "concrete cooperation and use available European funds in order to solve the problem of marine waste in the Adriatic Sea".
However, little concrete work has been done in the past two years, just as there have been no results in joint agreements and initiatives, such as the Joint Commission for the Protection of the Waters of the Adriatic Sea and Coastal Areas, the Adriatic Trilateral and the EU Strategy for the Adriatic-Ionian Region.
CZIP: Disallow the use of bags
"Waste and plastic do not only affect people and are not only a matter of visual damage to nature. Very often, birds feed their young with microplastics, to which even marine mammals are not immune," says the proclamation of the Center for the Protection and Study of Birds (CZIP) in Podgorica, whose activists have called on citizens to sign a petition for a ban on plastic bags and a final systemic treatment of waste.
So far they have collected 6.439 signatures.
During this year, the Martin Schneider Jacoby Association organized a series of actions to clean the beaches of Ulcinj, Salt Lake and Pine Forest.
"Our volunteers came across real landfills of plastic waste. We expected a bad situation, but not that there would be so many layers of accumulated plastic waste, over which the rains had spread the earth, so we almost fell through the plastic while we were cleaning," says the president of that association, Zenepa Lika.
Based on the fact that the best results are achieved through education, the Ulcinj Rotary Club recently implemented the Zero Waste Promotion project.
A member of that organization, Boris Marđonović, told CIN-CG/BIRN/Monitor that the implementation of this project was financially supported by a group of tourists from Norway who visited the Ulcinj Riviera for the first time last season and were enchanted by the beauty of the city.
"But when they saw the extent of plastic, they decided to launch a project through Rotary, insisting that preschool children should be primarily involved." Solving this issue is an indicator of our civilizational development", Marđonović is convinced.
We eat up the credit card weekly
On a global level, around eight billion tons of plastic have been produced since 1900. Half of that amount was produced in the last 13 years. An alarming warning was sent from the United Nations Assembly on Ecology, held in Nairobi last year - the world's seas and oceans are in a "plastic crisis". "By the middle of this century, 99 percent of seabirds will be poisoned by plastic, and already more than a million of them die annually because of it," says Peter Malvik from the UN Environment Program.
That institution stated that we eat as much plastic per week as one credit card contains, while the Ellen MacArthur Foundation warned that by 2050 there will be more plastic than fish in the sea.
In January 2018, the European Commission adopted the European Strategy for Plastics in the Circular Economy. In June of last year, a directive was adopted that prescribes new rules for reducing and limiting the use of single-use plastic products, cutlery, straws, ear sticks and the like. Member states are obliged to transpose this into national legislation by 2021. In addition to preventing and reducing the impact of single-use plastic products, the goal is to switch to other products and materials in a sustainable way.
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