Ocean Trash Research Paper

The most obvious pollutant comes in the form of garbage. Garbage is a visible source that we can see floating on the water’s surface. Among the garbage, plastic appears to be the most harmful to marine life. There is an average of 13,000 pieces of plastic litter scattered around every square kilometer of the ocean. An average of 6.4 million tons of marine litter reaches the oceans every year according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). At this rate scientists predict a bleak future for the oceans which are a vital to our planet 's existence.

Attention Grabber: Every year, billions of pounds of plastic and trash end up in the world’s oceans, adversely impacting marine wildlife populations.

As humans, we must reduce the amount of trash we let loose in our waters and begin removing what we have already filled them with. For instance, Jocelyn Kaiser explains how a man by the name of Charles Moore found a patch of garbage the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean in 1997 and to this day that patch has remained there. Also known as the “trash vortex” this patch consists of bottles, Styrofoam, tires, fishing line, wrappers, and raw resin (1506). The National Geographic adds that the vortex is split into two areas. The Western Garbage Patch is located near Japan and the Eastern Garbage Patch is located in-between California and Hawaii. Currents in the ocean act as a highway due to the mixture of warm and cold water, which moves the trash from one patch to another making the water look cloudy (Great). 80% of this trash comes from Asia and North Americas land and eventually makes its way into the rivers and oceans; the other 20% is from careless boaters (Great). Water pollution affecting marine life Kaiser describes a report by Marine pollution bulletin in 2001 saying the plastic waste that floats in the ocean is spreading toxins and toxin-laden microplastics and effecting animals. Marine life such as sea cucumbers, krill, and mussels are only a few marine

For decades, oceans have been one of the biggest dumpsters used throughout the world. Plastics among other pollutants have affected our oceans and freshwater as well as marine life. Plastic pollution effects not only the ocean and its’ marine life, but humans as well and not just in the United States, but everywhere. Landfills are running into water systems every day, carrying more plastics and trash into all of the oceans. For instance, in the Mediterranean Sea, sewage is untreated and that totals eighty percent. Sewage can lead to eutrophication, which is an enrichment of chemicals in an ecosystem, but it can cause human diseases as well. (Oceans) In reality, exposure to all marine organisms will be some sort of toxin or chemical, whether it is from the ocean or contaminated from human chemicals like pesticides. Deliberately dumped plastics and toxins spread into water systems daily. During the 1970’s dumping radioactive waste, chemical weapons, pesticides, and plastics have been disposed into oceans. The reason being was that people believed that since the oceans were so big that all the pollutants should be diluted, broken down, and dispersed throughout the ocean floor. In reality after disposal has continued for years, not a single pollutant has disappeared. In fact, 80% of plastics float, which means they will float for years until someone has picked them up or they have been broken down into smaller parts of oceans. Ocean pollution should end, even if it is recycling

If someone says that the area of the floating plastic garbage in the central North Pacific Ocean is twice the size of Texas, will you believe it? Charles Moore, an oceanographer who first came up with the idea of “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, caught sight of plastic trash floating in the North Pacific Gyre when he was sailing from Los Angeles to Hawaii. “I was confronted…with the sight of plastic,” Moore wrote in an essay for Natural History, “It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. No matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments” (“History – Algalita”). Besides the plastic that we can see from the surface, far below the surface, more plastic exists. The plastic is slowly releasing toxic chemicals, harming the water and the marine animals, and finally flows to the human body. Plastic makes our lives more convenient, but without proper treatment, it will pollute the ocean instead; therefore, we should reduce the amount of plastic waste we produce in order to prevent further pollution to the Pacific Ocean and to protect the marine animals.

Ocean dumping/littering is one of the biggest causes to harming sea life. According to Passage #1, it states, “Materials like plastic are non-degradable which means they will not be absorbed and recycled.” This shows that when plastics are being dumped into the oceans, they will stay there forever because they have no way of breaking down. This results in animals choking, and getting tangled up in plastic items. According to that same passage, it states that, “When oceanic creatures and even birds consume plastic inadvertently, they choke on it which causes a steady decline in their population.”

To marine life, plastic is like a poison. Filter feeders suck the tiny particles up resulting in their bodies being marred. Some animals eat the plastic which sometimes poisons them or leads to fatal blockages. Because there is a lot of predation in the ocean, the poison that encompasses the bodies of marine life affects the entire food chain (Silverman). The accumulated plastic and trash sometimes wash ashore, affecting beaches and oceans all over the world. This damages boat and submarine equipment, litter beaches, dissuades swimming and harms the

When I first heared of plastic islands in the ocean I already think of how bad and toxic that can be for our environment?, especially sea animals. This constant barrage (the equivalent of 136 billion milk jugs each year, estimates a?study?published in the journal?Science) poses a serious danger to marine life. Animals can get tangled up in this trash or ingest it?either because they mistake it as prey or because the plastic has been broken down into tiny particles by seawater? (Engler). This is just the big pieces of garbage what about the small pieces? A lot of the debris in the ocean are so small that even the human eye can not see the waste. Where does the waste go? Why are humans not more aware

This a huge problem that can solved by people around the world taking action and recycling plastic, paper and other recyclable materials. Every year around eight million metric tons of plastic make its way to the ocean by either direct dumping or is blown into the sea by wind or storm (McCoy). The plastic in the ocean is not just large pieces such as water bottles or plastic bags, most of the plastic in the ocean is small micro-sized pieces usually around one to ten millimeters (Plankton) . These micro-sized pieces are broke down from larger pieces and make ocean cleanup very difficult. Micro-sized pieces of plastic also pose a problem to the wildlife that call the ocean home.

The ocean plastic pollution is a huge problem that most people don’t notice. The plastic in the ocean is hurting people. 93 percent of Americans six or older test positive for the plastic chemical BPA. We have way to much plastic everywhere that ends up in our waterways. In the Los Angeles area alone, ten metric tons of plastic fragments—like grocery bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day. We are not doing so well on cleaning our oceans. We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce.

Ocean dumping and trash pollution are huge environmental health problem in the United States and around the world. Not only does the water pollution affect water we use, but endangers and kills animals and plants that use the ocean as their home or as a source of food to survive. If trash, such as plastic, makes their way into the main sewage system, they also can make their way to the ocean when water treatment system facilities are overflowed with rain water. In addition, some boater’s will dump their trash directly into the sea, which at one point was the main cause of plastic being in the ocean.

Our waste such as plastic and contaminated water makes its way to the ocean. There, it has a devastating effect on marine life. “5.25 trillion plastic particles weighing some 269,000 tons are floating on the surface of the sea” (Seltenrich). In Seltenrich’s article, “The World Bank estimates that 1.4 billion tons of trash are generated globally each year, 10% of it plastic.” “Plastics that reach the ocean will gradually break down into ever-smaller pieces due to sunlight exposure, oxidation, and the physical action of waves, currents, and grazing by fish and birds.” (Seltenrich). A marine life that is mostly affected is the sea turtles. The sea turtles either consume the plastic or become trap in it, or even both. According to Lowenberg, ingestion of plastic can “result in poor health, reduced growth rates and reproductive output, or death”. Their nesting sites and the baby sea turtles are also at risk. The baby sea turtles can become trap to the plastic as they make their way from the polluted shore into the ocean.

of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the exact size remains unknown. In addition, Doucette warns us that this patch contains more than ten million tons of waste. She describes the area to be a “fetid swamp of debris where tiny bits of decaying plastic outweigh zooplankton- one of the most prolific and abundant organisms on the planet- by a ration of six-to-one”(Doucette). It is now apparent that the amount of plastic particles residing in our oceans is damaging the natural habit and this trash is not going anywhere. Due to the currents in the ocean, plastic particles are

Plastic pollution within ocean waters is one of the most destructive types of seawater contamination, as it not only poisons seafood, but also harms the population simultaneously. There are plenty of repercussions that occur from allowing waste to be disposed in open waters. Disposing wastes in the water causes ecosystems to become contaminated, resulting in the depletion of selective species that cannot adapt or operate in the confines of their new deadly home. A newspaper article titled Oceans of garbage threaten Earth; Fields Of Debris, discusses the effects of plastic debris on a beach near Vancouver Island. According to the U.S. National Park Services, “ it takes a plastic bottle 450 years to decompose in the environment” (Moneo 1). This process of decomposition has detrimental long-term effects on aquatic life and mammals, as they are prone to ingest the waste found within these waters. Plastic Debris in the World 's Oceans states that, “almost 270 animal species ingest or get tangled in the spiked soup that has become our oceans. Dead ocean birds are found with cigarette lighters in their bellies. Sea turtles snap up bottle caps. Grey whales swallow bottles. Fish partake of the colourful, floating

Many fears and concerns that are really concentrated for garbage and plastic is the the ocean water. It is shown that thousands of garbage and plastic have been found in the middle of the ocean. And that it is causing decreasing numbers in the marine population. The article (For Ocean Animals, ‘Death By Plastic’ Could Be Occurring More Frequently) said that “The whale discovered in the Netherlands is only the fifth whale confirmed to have died from ingesting plastic. This might be because some are able to process it better than others, or there could be more that never made it to shore and therefore couldn’t be reliably counted.