Six Places Where Oceans, Rivers And Marine Life Have Rebounded During The Coronavirus Pandemic

As the US Congress approved a $3 trillion Economic Aid Package overnight – the largest in history – calls have been growing to ensure this is a pro-environment stimulus that reflects a new climate reality, as South Korea, the EU, the UK, regions like California, and potentially even China, are showing with their COVID-19 economic stimulus responses.

The vibrancy with which the planet has rebounded to the global lockdowns (covering half the world’s population), has revealed how resilient wildlife is, and how quickly nature can recover if given a break.  This shows that environmental protection can make a difference.

First the planet saw an improvement in air quality as factories and transport around the world shut down. Then we saw land and wildlife resurge, as humans reduced their presence by staying at home. After air and land, now there’s growing evidence that the world’s oceans, rivers and waters are becoming clearer and full of life once more.

Here are six places around the world that have seen dramatic changes in water quality and marine life during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

1. River Ganges, India

The River Ganges is one of India’s most important rivers. It is also one of the world’s most polluted with industrial, sewage, agricultural and tourism waste.  However, within four weeks of the complete shutdown of 1.3 billion in India, reports started to emerge about how clean the waters of the Ganges had become from the foothills of the Himalayas through to the Ganges’ mouth by the City of Kolkata. In some places, the waters had even become drinkable again for the first time in two decades.

Elsewhere around the world, other rivers have seen significant improvements in water quality, with reports from Malaysia, Italy, Singapore, and China (despite some setbacks).   These improvements can be tracked by satellite imagery.

2. Beaches as turtle havens

Around the world, as tourists have retreated from beaches, turtles have been returning to hatch. Most species of turtles are endangered, with tourism often disturbing fragile breeding grounds on prime beach locations. The quiet times at beaches has given more space for turtles to lay their eggs.

So far, the nests of the endangered Leatherback Turtles in Phuket, Thailand are at their highest levels for 20 years (no Leatherback Turtle nests were discovered in Phuket over the previous five years due to human disturbance).

Other beaches around the world have also seen a resurgence in turtle nests, with thousands of Olive Ridley Sea Turtles hatching in North India, and nests of Leatherback Turtles in Florida being significantly higher from this time last year.

Perhaps this could offer new opportunities for beach management (such as seasonal beach closing) to allow refuges for turtle breeding, and attract a different form of nature-based tourism.

3. Horseshoe Crab recovery in Chesapeake Bay

Chesapeake Bay on the shores of New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Delaware in the Eastern United States is one of the largest brackish water Bays in the world, with its watershed being home to 18 million. Each year over April and May (during the full moon cycle), an incredible spawning of hundreds of thousands of Horseshoe Crabs – a relic of the dinosaur age – take place on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay. This coincides with the incredible 9000 mile migration from Brazil to the Arctic of the Red Knots birds who feast on the eggs of the spawning Horseshoe Crabs. For years, overfishing for the valuable blue blood of the Horseshoe Crab, which is essential for the pharmaceutical industry, has led to their numbers plummeting and bringing the populations of Red Knots down too.

This year, indications have been that the populations of Horseshoe Crabs and Red Knots have stabilized during this crucial spawning season.

Bays around the world form critical habitats and are often associated with polluted river estuaries from agricultural and industrial runoff. As the impact of lower agricultural and industrial output around the world, there may be temporary improvement of bays around and estuaries around the world.

4. Endangered otters return to lakes in Malaysia

Further inland, life is returning to many lakes. The endangered otter had been in decline in Malaysia over many years. However, during the COVID-19 lockdown (known locally as the Movement Control Order), otters were spotted in the usually crowded Putrajaya Lake and several other lakes inland within Malaysia. This has been in line with the clearer air and other environmental improvements seen in Malaysia during the MCO. Otters are a protected species under Malaysian Law, and had been hunted or displaced by human activities prior to COVID-19. 

Elsewhere, the world’s largest tropical lake, Lake Victoria in East Africa, may have rebounded too much. 40 million depend on the waters of Lake Victoria. With imported food from China being impacted by global trade slowdown, local fishermen initially benefited with strong local demand for fish. However, at the same time after years of fluctuating water levels, pollution, overfishing and invasive species, the East African lake has also been experiencing significant flooding, impacting Uganda and Kenya who surround the East African lake. Whilst this has caused flooding upstream, the extra water is sure to benefit countries downstream along the White Nile, such as Egypt, South Sudan and Sudan.  

With agricultural fertilizer output significantly down, this could also provide a respite to allow lakes around the world to temporarily recover for agricultural and industrial pollution. These indicators often take a few weeks to until they can be picked up from monitors, so more information is likely to emerge as data is tracked.

5. Break for fish with docked fishing fleets worldwide

Global fisheries were already under pressure prior to COVID-19.  Since the 1950s, the global fishing fleet more than doubled leading to 90% of the world’s fisheries being fully fished, 60% exceeding maximum capacity and 20% of fisheries completely collapsing (such as Cod in the North Atlantic in the 1990s).

With COVID-19, most coastal fleets have stayed docked in port, as can be seen from satellite tracking of fishing activity. The biggest impact was in coastal fisheries where fleets from China, Spain, Italy and France saw 50-75% reductions in coastal fishing activity compared to the same period last year. Industrial fishing activity – where vessels often stay at sea for months on end, relying on a system of ‘mother ships’ or transshipments – was less affected and activity was only down 10% compared to the same period last year.

The slowdown in global industrial fishing activity is more likely to favor recovery of species in the Mediterranean, which breed between March and May, and in the Atlantic, which breed between April and June.

In other markets, such as the shark market of Indonesia, demand appears to be down by 70%.

6. All ocean life benefit from quieter oceans

More broadly around the world, ocean life is seeing a resurgence.  Since the coronavirus shutdown, global shipping has been significantly disrupted. This has meant that the world’s oceans are now the quietest they have been for over 150 years. 

Sound travels much further in the ocean, and many whale and dolphin species have evolved highly specialized communications in these conditions. Industrial shipping has made the ocean an increasingly noisy place, and is tracked through a system of hydrophones on the ocean floor.

The quieter oceans have led to incredible footage of marine life resurging around the world, that is making scientists eager to get out and monitor the effects of the coronavirus shut down.

Time for a Blue New Deal

Coming into the COVID-19 pandemic, the world faced the specter of water insecurity, overfishing and marine pollution. Encouragingly, the resurgence of the world’s waters so rapidly shows that with the right management protocols, it is possible for the health of the world’s waters to improve.

Such management systems are likely to be a critical component of any post-COVID stimulus in order to build back better.