As every year since 2008, this June 8 is celebrated the World Oceans Day. Like the other ephemerides that we celebrate around the environment of our planet, this time it is also marked by the impact that COVID-19 has generated in each of the aspects of life on Earth.

The importance of the seas and oceans

Our planet Earth is also known as the blue planet because more than 70% of its surface is covered by the waters of oceans and seas, which gives it its distinctive color. These huge bodies of water are essential for life as they provide us with food, as well as being important regulators of climate change and generators of most of the oxygen we breathe.

They are also essential for the development of the world economic system, since in its waters activities of fundamental economic sectors such as fishing on various scales, tourism, and international maritime navigation are carried out, the latter base for the transport of raw materials and finished products. that are marketed globally.

Just as we are facing an unprecedented global health problem, our seas and oceans do not escape this serious crisis, since the health of the population also depends to an increasing extent on them. However, the accelerated growth of the world population has brought, among its many consequences, the contamination of the waters of our seas and oceans in an increasingly alarming way, being the pollution by single-use plastics and by residual microplastics, the most important for this moment.

Innovation for a Sustainable Ocean

This year 2020 the UN has chosen as the central theme for the celebration of the date the “Innovation for a Sustainable Ocean”, seeking to encourage creative solutions to the problems confronting our oceans, through new methods, ideas or products, that offer tangible results. All this as a framework that leads to the activities of the Week of the Oceans that begins this June 8.

It has also been wanted that this year’s theme takes on relevance, since the United Nations Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development begins in 2021. Among its objectives is to strengthen international cooperation in scientific research and innovative technologies. Both necessary for the interconnection between the sciences that study the oceans and the needs of society on our blue planet.

Aixa Chacin