Fish farming destroys important carbon sinks.

Coastal habitats, such as mangroves, sea grasses and salt marshes are being cleared at a rapid rate for shrimp farms as well as agriculture and other forms of human development.

Now a new study by Dr. Emily Pidgeon, Director of the Conservation International’s Marine Climate Change advocates for the immediate preservation of these vanishing habitats, due to their ability to sequester as much as 50 times the amount of carbon as tropical forests.

Dr. Pidgeon explained that unlike forests, which store carbon primarily in the living flora, plants in salt marshes are very efficient at burying carbon in the soil itself so that it is not released when the plant dies and can remain underground for thousands of years. She stated, “The simple implication of this is that the long-term sequestration of carbon by one square kilometer of mangrove area is equivalent to that occurring in fifty square kilometers of tropical forest.”

Dr. Pidgeon and colleagues at Conservation International, many thanks for shedding further light on the value of our coastal ecosystems. Let us all strive to tread more lightly and preserve nature’s balance. Supreme Master Ching Hai has long highlighted the need for humanity’s greater protection of our marine environment, as during a November 2008 interview with Ireland’s East Coast Radio FM.

Supreme Master Ching Hai: We have to stop it somehow. Just stop the fishing. The government has to forbid fishing because it’s too important to our survival to delay any further. Not only is there overfishing and depleting of the marine life, but there is also side killing. Like when the commercial long liners go fishing, they normally target swordfish but then they’re killing tens of thousands of sea turtles, by the way, and hundreds of thousands of sea birds and millions of sharks every year.

To stop this destructive practice of fishing, the solution is the vegan diet, no fishy stuff in our meals. The sea offers us plenty of better food choices; the wide varieties of super healthy and nutritious sea plants. We can even live on it forever.  We must protect a living and healthy sea, as it relates to our living and healthy self.

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