عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Varieties

Sand Dredging Is ‘Sterilizing’ Ocean Floor, UN Warns

Sand-dredging ships with Chinese flags are seen from a Taiwanese coast guard ship patrolling in the waters off the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands, January 28, 2021.
Sand-dredging ships with Chinese flags are seen from a Taiwanese coast guard ship patrolling in the waters off the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands, January 28, 2021.
TT
TT

Sand Dredging Is ‘Sterilizing’ Ocean Floor, UN Warns

Sand-dredging ships with Chinese flags are seen from a Taiwanese coast guard ship patrolling in the waters off the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands, January 28, 2021.
Sand-dredging ships with Chinese flags are seen from a Taiwanese coast guard ship patrolling in the waters off the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands, January 28, 2021.

Around 6 billion tons of marine sand is being dug up each year in a growing practice that a UN agency said is unsustainable and can wipe out local marine life irreversibly.

Sand is the most exploited natural resource in the world after water but its extraction for use in industries like construction is only loosely governed, prompting the UN to pass a resolution last year to promote more sustainable mining.

The findings from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) coincide with the launch of a new platform "Marine Sand Watch" backed by funding from the Swiss government that monitors dredging activities using marine tracking and artificial intelligence.

"The amount of sand we are withdrawing from the environment is considerable and has a large impact," UNEP's Pascal Peduzzi told a Geneva press briefing.

Pointing to an image of a ship he described as a "giant vacuum cleaner" he said such vessels were "basically sterilizing the bottom of the sea by extracting sand and crunching all the microorganisms that are feeding fish".

In some cases, companies remove all the sand to the bedrock, meaning that "life may never recover", Peduzzi added.

While globally the 6 billion being extracted is less than the sand deposited annually by the world's rivers, in some areas the removal is surpassing replenishment rates, UNEP said.

The South China Sea, the North Sea and the east coast of the United States are among the areas where the most dredging has occurred, said Arnaud Vander Velpen, a sand industry and data analytics officer with the University of Geneva.

China, the Netherlands, the United States and Belgium are among the countries most active in the sector, he said.

Most Viewed

 
 
Varieties

In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
TT
TT

In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)

We watch video after video, consuming the world on our handheld devices in bites of two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15. We turn to moving pictures — “film” — because it comes the closest to approximating the world that we see and experience. This is, after all, 2024, and video in our pocket — ours, others', everyone's — has become our birthright.
But sometimes — even in this era of live video always rolling, always recording, always capturing — sometimes the frozen moment can enter the eye like nothing else. And in the process, it can tell a larger story that echoes long after the moment was captured. That's what happened this past week in Beirut, through the camera lens of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and the photographs he captured.
When Hussein set up his camera outside an evacuated Beirut apartment building Tuesday after Israel announced it would be targeted as part of military operations against Hezbollah, he had one goal in mind — only one. "All I thought of," he says, “was photographing the missile while it was coming down.”
He found a safe spot. He ensured a good angle. He wasn't stressed, he said; like many photographers who work in such environments, he had been in situations like this one before. He was ready.
When the attack came — a bomb, not a missile in the end — Hussein swung into action. And, unsurprisingly for a professional who has been doing this work for two decades, he did exactly what he set out to do.
Time slowed down
The sequence of images he made bursts with the explosive energy of its subject matter.
In one frame, the bomb hangs there, a weird and obtrusive interloper in the scene. It is not yet noticed by anyone around it, ready to bring its destruction to a building that, in moments, will no longer exist. The building's balconies, a split-second from nonexistence, are devoid of people as the bomb finds its mark.
These are the kind of moments that video, rolling at the speed of life or even in slow motion, cannot capture in the same way. A photo holds us in the scene, stops time, invites a viewer to take the most chaotic of events and break it down, looking around and noticing things in a strangely silent way that actual life could not.
In another frame, one that happened micro moments after the first, the building is in the process of exploding. Let's repeat that for effect, since even as recently as a couple generations ago photographs like this were rare: in the process of exploding.
Pieces of building are shooting out in all directions, in high velocity — in real life. But in the image they are frozen, outward bound, hanging in space awaiting the next seconds of their dissolution — just like the bomb that displaced them was doing milliseconds before. And in that, a contemplation of the destruction — and the people it was visited upon — becomes possible.
Tech gives us new prisms to see the world
The technology to grab so many images in the course of little more than one second — and do it in such clarity and high resolution — is barely a generation old.
So to see these “stills,” as journalists call them, come together to paint a picture of an event is a combination of artistry, intrepidity and technology — an exercise in freezing time, and in giving people the opportunity to contemplate for minutes, even hours, what took place in mere seconds. This holds true for positive things that the camera captures — and for visitations of violence like this one as well.
Photography is random access. We, the viewers of it, choose how to see it, process it, digest it. We go backward and forward in time, at will. We control the pace and the speed at which dizzying images hurtle at us. And in that process, something unusual for this era emerges: a bit of time to think.
That, among many other things, is the enduring power of the still image in a moving-picture world — and the power of what Bilal Hussein captured on that clear, sunny day in Beirut.