Economy and Human Activity
The Caribbean region has seen a significant increase in human activity since the colonisation period. The sea is one of the largest oil production areas in the world, producing approximately 170 million tons per year. The area also generates a large fishing industry for the surrounding countries, accounting for half a million metric tons of fish a year.
Human activity in the area also accounts for a significant amount of pollution, The Pan American Health Organization estimated in 1993 that only about 10% of the sewage from the Central American and Caribbean Island countries is properly treated before being released into the Sea.
The Caribbean region supports a large tourist industry. The Caribbean Tourism Organization calculates that about 12 million people a year visit the area, including (in 1991–1992) about 8 million Cruise Ship tourists. Tourism based upon scuba diving and snorkeling on coral reefs of many Caribbean islands makes a major contribution to their economies.
Read more about this topic: Caribbean Sea
Famous quotes containing the words economy, human and/or activity:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“... one thing that distinguishes a frontier is the precarious nature of the human hold on it.”
—Kathleen Norris (b. 1947)
“Dissent is the native activity of the scientist, and it has got him into a good deal of trouble in the last years. But if that is cut off, what is left will not be a scientist. And I doubt whether it will be a man.”
—Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974)