Your Beaches, your future………….. You can decide on their fate!

Hello to all once again welcome to 2014.

Our need for Marine Protected Areas can not be underestimated. We need to ensure that our oceans are usable for all people for current and future generations. New Years day in Durban typifies this need. No this area is not a Marine Protected Area, but having these protected areas helps to ensure that the entire ocean can have improved management. This goes further and we need to extend this area inland to all catchments and how we use our resources. These pictures taken by Kierran Allan (https://twitter.com/KierranAllen/ ) show the value of our ocean to the general public that do not have access to the waters every day. Imagine the impacts on this cultural event if the water was too polluted to swim in or, the impact of these thousands of people using this resource on this day, and others if the ocean no longer functioned correctly. How would our lives be impacted health wise, or costs of food and quality of foods.

In this time of celebration and new motivation for the year I will encourage you to remember we share this planet and its resources with each other and are merely the custodians for a short period of time until the future generations take over from us. lets make them proud of the statements we make and the positive ways we can improve our sustainable future.

We all have a right to free and safe areas and having a great place to have easy access to our great natural resources is a very special privilege. So lets not forget to keep it clean and safe and re-usable for our future.

 

Studies have shown that our beaches are under threat with increased population pressure, but areas of low population are in much better condition. There is also abundant life beneath the sand, including plants and bugs. So next time you are tanning on the beach remember you are lying on a living and unique habitat and that the plants actively contribute to our oxygen needs and the bugs help clean the beaches so that we can use them safely. Having Marine Protected Areas allow for restoration of beaches that will actively contribute back to disturbed beaches in time, but also so much more. Your support and active help will always be appreciated. We might not see the results today but our future generations will.