The United Nations warns that sand dredging is destroying the ocean floor

The United Nations says about six billion tons of sand is extracted from the world’s oceans each year, endangering marine life and coastal communities.

Sand is the most exploited natural resource in the world after water, and is used in the production of concrete and glass.

The United Nations Environment Program said some of the vessels act as vacuum cleaners, sweeping up sand and microorganisms that the fish feed on.

This means that life may never recover in some areas.

The new data coincides with the launch of a new analysis tool called Marine Sand Watch which monitors dredging activities using marine tracking and artificial intelligence.

“The scale of the environmental impacts of mining and dredging activities in shallow seas is of concern,” said Pascal Pedozzi, who heads the UN Environment Programme’s Center for Analytics (GRID-Geneva).

The new platform estimates that of the approximately 50 billion tons of sand and gravel that humanity uses each year, an average of six billion tons comes from the world’s oceans and seas.

That’s the equivalent of “more than a million dump trucks every day,” Pedozi said.

He stressed that the marine environment must be given time to recover, adding that it is “not sustainable”.

Big ships, Pedozi said, “basically sterilize the sea floor by extracting sand and crushing all the microorganisms that feed on the fish.”

He added that sometimes sand is washed into the rock, which means marine life may never recover.

The United Nations Environment Program recommended banning sand dredging from beaches to protect coastline resilience and economies.

Sand is needed to build buildings, roads, hydroelectric dams and solar panels. It can also play an important environmental role, protecting communities from rising sea levels.

The report notes that the South China Sea, the North Sea and the east coast of the United States are among the areas where the largest dredging has occurred.