Ocean Pollution

 OCEAN POLLUTION

   

Summary and facts

       Ocean pollution is something that often gets overlooked when thinking about the environment. Many people do not realize the amount of trash that floats away into the ocean from sewage pipes, rivers, and other outlets leading to our oceans. Most of the trash that appears become microplastics, which measure between 0.3 and 5 millimeters in diameter. They are tiny particles of plastic that were broken down over time with sunlight, waves, and marine life. This affects not only the water quality, but also animal life and our beaches. 

    The amount of trash in the oceans dumped per minute is 2 garbage trucks. As of 2021, there are around 363,762,732,605 billion pounds of plastic in the world's oceans. It has even reached the deepest cavern in the ocean (the Mariana trench) where they found plastic stuck at 36,000 feet below. The amount of trash has allowed for new terms to appear such as garbage patch, and Garbage Island. 

    This Garbage Island is located between California and Hawaii and is considered to be the size of Texas. It isn't exactly a traditional island you can walk on, but more so a literal sea of microplastics you can drive a boat through. 

This is all waste that is out of sight, so it's out of mind. This needs to be addressed and taken care of because of the irreparable damages that it causes for the environment.

    One of the main damages is to marine life. Seagulls are often starved to death and die because their bellies are full, yet they don't eat anything. This is because they eat the colorful plastics thinking they're small game or insects, and their bellies fill up. Many people only ever think of sea turtles with straws and 6-pack soda rings when it comes to ocean pollution, but the gravity of the danger is much heavier than that. Those little ads saying ban straws was only for corporations to not get public flack, but the fact of the matter is that ocean pollution extends to anything and everything that gets tossed away. Mainly if it's made out of plastic, because that takes hundreds of years to decompose, if it ever does. Pictured below is a bird whose remains are filled with plastics because it could not digest them. Bottle caps can look like little craps or snails, and they eat them because they aren't able to tell the difference from a shell or plastic.

Why it matters to me. 

    The beach and ocean are one of my favorite vacation spots to travel to. Every year I go to Mexico and go to a local beach where my family is from, and occasionally go to a different tourist beach with my family. Swimming is one of my favorite hobbies to do while at the beach, but it saddens and disgust me when I see even a single bottle floating on the shoreline from a careless tourist who didn't take the time to throw away their trash properly. I miss seeing the clear water at my local beach and dislike that its getting darker and darker as the years go on. Not to mention places like Puerto Vallarta having clear blue shores, not having some plastics stuck under the sand while walking along the shoreline. These beautiful places are being destroyed. 

Why did I choose this issue.

Being that beaches are my favorite places to go to, I want to bring awareness to this issue and try to make people realize that we need to do a better job at taking care of our trash. Many people litter because they're too lazy to simply hold onto their trash until reaching a trashcan. Some societies like Japan don't even have public trashcans. It's just expected for one to clean up after themselves and carry their trash home where they have a multitude of bins to separate and organize. 

Community response

Andrew

"Knowing the mere existence of the Garbage Island has me doubting if we can be trusted with long term nonbiodegradable materials like plastics. As per the topic of bioplastics, we humans are trying to reduce our footprint on the environment, but more measures need to be taken not just for the wildlife, but for the quality of the wildlife we consume."

                                                                               Joel 

"I don't believe ocean pollution affects me directly, but it definitely has a way to reach us indirectly. When we start discussing "Garbage Island", many people cannot fathom how huge it is and will continue to grow if we do not start to come up with solutions. Because of "garbage Island", tons of billions of microplastics are released into the ocean, causing sea life to be in great peril, even affecting humans and other wildlife that consume sea food which now contain microplastics, known to cause cancer. I believe it is our job to continue to strive in reducing our own waste, not just for ourselves, but for the rest of the wildlife."

Resources

Hancock, Lorin. “Plastic in the Ocean.” WWF, World Wildlife Fund, 2019, https://www.worldwildlife.org/magazine/issues/fall-2019/articles/plastic-in-the-ocean.

“Ocean Pollution and Marine Debris.” National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. NOAA, April 1, 2020. https://www.noaa.gov/education/resource-collections/ocean-coasts/ocean-pollution.

Parker, Laura. “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Isn't What You Think It Is.” Education. National Geographic, June 2, 2022. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-pacific-garbage-patch-isnt-what-you-think/.

Plastic in the ocean | Magazine Articles | WWF (worldwildlife.org)

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Isn’t What You Think It Is (nationalgeographic.org)

Ocean pollution and marine debris | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (noaa.gov)