Fiberglass has always been a dream material for designers with its durability and flexibility. However, in the case of abandoned fiber boats, this dream can become a nightmare.

Eda Selçuk, Setur Marinas Finike Front Office Representative

Although abandoned fiberglass boats may one day become a shelter for the homeless, they also cause significant damage to the environment and human health, especially the marine ecosystem.

Fiberglass, preferred by many boat lovers when buying a boat, turns into a significant cost item as time passes. Boat owners seeing the high costs of maintenance and repair, or not being able to afford the cost of recycling, sometimes abandon their boats in a harbor or marina. This has harmful consequences you cannot imagine.

Fiberglass boats, which have been abandoned and become remnants, eventually cause micro plastic pollution with the solvent effect of the sea. Since they are not biodegradable, it is not possible for them to dissolve in nature without leaving a chemical residue. Abandoned and trashed boats not only impact the lives of sea creatures such as reefs and seagrasses, but also cause creatures such as oysters and mussels, which feed by filtering the water, to ingest the micro plastic particles emitted from the fiber.

Research by scientists off the south coast of England has shown that oysters and mussels collected from areas near active boatyards contain significant amounts of fiberglass particles in their tissues. This is a rather worrying finding. Laboratory research has also proven that exposure of marine species to these particles impacts their nutrition, growth and reproduction. This is projected to lead to a decline in the populations of these species, creating a ripple effect throughout the marine ecosystem over time. The research also shows that the rate at which micro plastic particles are released into the environment increases during the winter months, when boat maintenance activities increase. It is also seen that landfill problems during the disposal of fiberglass waste play a major role in the degradation of local ecosystems and long-term environmental pollution impacting human health. Reasons such as insufficient infrastructure to manage fiberglass material recycling have a negative impact on the economies of countries that depend on tourism and fishery trade.

Simply put, a material that seems very ordinary and even sympathetic to us can cause colossal damage when considered on a larger scale. Therefore, it is important that fiberglass is included among hazardous waste and that future generations are made aware of this issue. Maybe this will allow more innovative alternatives to come to fruition and leave a cleaner marine ecosystem for the future.

Reference: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389424011981?

Photograph: Unsplash – Jassim Vailoces, Chester Ho, Carl Tronders