Abstract

Land-based marine pollution (LMP) is complex, population dependent, expensive to remedy, and a threat to both human and marine ecosystem health. It is one of the most difficult marine issues to tackle and resolve successfully. Scientists, managers, and policy makers have addressed it in many coastal states since the 1960s, placing pollution control into several treaties, agreements, and conventions, most of them still being implemented. This chapter discusses sewage (domestic and industrial), heavy metals, hydrocarbons, sediment uploads, and agrochemicals as the most important sources of LMP pollution to the Caribbean Sea region. It also addresses invasive species, marine debris, and thermal contamination as threats to the health of the most important coastal and offshore ecosystems of the region. The harm that pollutants cause to species and habitats, e.g., coral reefs and mangrove forests, is contrasted with the potential of some marine ecosystems to resist and recover from some types of pollution, e.g., oil spills. The chapter serves as a guide to environmental managers on the priority LMP issues in the Caribbean Sea region, aspects of each issue to consider with urgency and commitment and the importance of ecosystembased management (EBM) for prevention, mitigation, and remediation of LMP.

Introduction

The Caribbean Sea is one of the world's largest salt water seas, with approximately 2,500,000 km2 encompassing a wide variety of ecosystems including coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass beds, rocky shores, soft bottoms, and others (Sheppard 2000). An estimated 100 million people now live in the area in 26 countries and 19 dependent territories (Fanning et al. 2007), using the Caribbean Sea as a source of goods and services and in many places highly impacting its ecosystems (Jackson 1997).

Land-based marine pollution (LMP) is a well recognised coastal issue for coastal states globally and is considered, due to its inherent complexity from sources to governance, to be one of the most difficult marine environmental issues to tackle and resolve successfully. Scientists and managers alike have been addressing the issue in many countries since the 1960s.