Cliffs sculpted by glaciers flank the fjord that connects to the Saint Lawrence River, far from any major city. The marine sanctuary was granted protected status 26 years ago.
"It's one thing to legislate to make it a protected area, but then how do we maintain it?" said Canadian biologist Anne-Marie Asselin before diving in search of trash.
With her team from the Blue Organization, she navigates the brackish waters of the fjord to document pollution in the area.
The objective is twofold: to identify the most common waste to target the plastics that should be banned from sale, and to predict the banks most at risk of being polluted, based in particular on currents, to better target cleaning campaigns.
- Worrying trend -
By paddle board, on foot or freediving, Asselin and her crew collect all kinds of waste in the bay of the village of Petit-Saguenay.
Under a blazing hot sun, the group's Laurence Martel sorted the waste by more than 100 criteria, including by brand, to eventually seek to hold producers responsible for their products' entire lifecycle.
"The most popular find is the cigarette butt, it is omnipresent," Martel said.
She noted that a single cigarette butt can contaminate up to 500 liters of water due to the thousands of chemical compounds it contains.
In five years, the team's research has revealed a worrying trend: the concentration of plastic waste is increasing significantly closer to the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Atlantic, "suggesting a shift in waste from urban areas towards downstream parts of the river."
"Very often, the smallest plastics are the ones that pollute the most," Martel said.
- Ecosystem health -
Waste becomes microplastics as it disintegrates. Most often invisible to the naked eye, these particles are made of polymers and other toxic compounds that vary from five millimeters to one thousandth of a millimeter.
They are found throughout the food chain of marine life, particularly invertebrates.
The Blue Organization fishes and analyzes these "sentinel species" -- considered gauges of the health of their environment -- during each cleanup operation.
"If your mussels and your invertebrates are starting to suffer, that could be an indicator that the health of the ecosystem is also declining," said Miguel Felismino, of McGill University in Montreal.
Seated on a catamaran, Felismino measured, photographed and arranged the mussel specimens, which he will also analyze in a laboratory to study the effects of microplastics.
Using a homemade pump and a few pipes placed at the front of the boat, he also collected surface water and sediment from the seabed for his research
- Behavioral changes -
The Blue Organization wants to produce a complete picture of the plastic lifecycle in protected areas such as the Saguenay-Saint Lawrence Marine Park.
But to protect these ecosystems, the solution is "also to trigger behavioral changes" in people, said the biologist Asselin, who called on artists to "raise awareness" of the situation.
This could involve making music from natural sounds or creating a "literary translation" of scientific research, Asselin said.
"With climate change, the soundscapes associated with certain territories are set to evolve," said one such artist, Emilie Danylewick, before plunging her hydrophone into the water to record the sounds.
Danylewick said her work is a "way to preserve the current soundscape memory of the territory."
How plastic pollution poses challenge for Canada marine conservation
Montreal (AFP) Sept 20, 2024 -
One of the largest producers of plastic waste per capita, Canada is struggling to protect its designated marine protected areas from this pollution, experts warn.
Here are some key points about the issue facing the North American country.
- Significant plastic pollution -
With more than four million tonnes produced each year, Canada generates "two to four times more" plastic pollution per person than the global average, said Anthony Merante of the NGO Oceana.
In 2020, more than 90 percent of plastic waste ended up in landfills or was incinerated, and only seven percent was recycled, according to the Canadian environment ministry.
The remaining roughly two percent, or 90,000 tonnes, ended up in the environment.
"Plastic pollution is so ubiquitous at this point, we can't protect marine protected areas from plastic pollution unless we stop plastic pollution at the source," said Merante, head of Oceana Canada's plastics campaign.
Globally, annual plastic production has more than doubled in 20 years to reach 460 million tonnes.
Only nine percent is recycled, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
And more than half of it is single-use packaging -- "things that we use for a few moments and that end up lasting hundreds of years," said Merante.
- New regulations -
In June 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's federal government banned six types of single-use plastics with the goal of achieving zero plastic waste by 2030.
The regulation is being challenged in court by Canadian and American plastics manufacturers, as well as petrochemical firms.
Several municipalities, including Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton, have already banned certain single-use plastics.
More biodegradable utensils are being found on the banks near the island city of Montreal, said Anne-Marie Asselin, a marine biologist who has been carrying out collection campaigns along the Saint Lawrence River for five years.
This shows that people's "behaviors have not changed," but the kind of waste now generated has "much less impact on the environment," she noted.
Ottawa is also working on creating a federal plastics registry.
The goal is to hold manufacturers accountable by requiring them to report on the life cycle of the plastics they put into circulation.
In the case of federal marine protected areas, few measures have been put in place against plastic pollution.
The Department of Fisheries and Oceans maintains that it is, however, "taken into account" when creating new marine protected areas and that since 2019, it has been prohibited to dump waste in protected areas.
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