Oceanology Memo

Everybody throws away trash with little or no thought about where it’s going. What you might not know is that a lot of trash goes into our ocean. You may think it is not a big deal and that it’s just a little bit of trash in a really big ocean, but it’s not just a little bit of trash. In fact, it’s a whole lot. There is a place between California and Hawaii called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, but is better known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”. This area is the largest landfill in the world and is completely in the ocean. What are the effects of the landfill on the environment and how can it be prevented and rehabilitated to its original state?

In t­he broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and­ s­ailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.

In the world's oceans there a 5 large gyres. Each one of these gyres are known to be filled with trash. These gyres are, Indian Ocean Gyre , North Atlantic Gyre, North Pacific Gyre,South Atlantic Gyre, and South Pacific Gyre. The largest and most known gyre is found in the pacific ocean, and is known as the great pacific garbage patch. This garbage patch is double the size of Texas and can be as deep as nine feet in some areas. In 1971 it was suspected that only .1% of the world's trash went into the oceans. The projections today are far worse, it is expected that anywhere between 15-40% of the world's trash enters our oceans yearly. What is being done to counteract this. Well, PRI published Two proposals to clean up our oceans of garbage:

The article describe the ocean pollution through two phenomenon-- amount of plastics occur in the oceans and doubling increased “dead zones”. In term of plastic garbage, Dahr primarily states that human behavior caused “unknown ecological and evolutionary consequences” more and more small size of plastic occurred in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, tonnes of garbage float in the ocean and to the beaches. Increase in pollution impacts on ocean’s ecological

Plastic is polluting the oceans, and the animals that live there are being harmed as a result of the pollution. Some animals, such as Sea turtles thinks that the plastic in the ocean is food. A piece of evidence that supports this is an article by the center

Plastic harms the ocean and everything in it. National Geographic says that over eight-million tons of plastic are dumped onto the ocean every year. That means that over one-hundred million marine animals die from plastic debris every year. Humans are also getting hurt from plastic. Scientists at Ghent University in Belgium recently discovered that people that eat the average amount of seafood are eating up to eleven-thousand plastic fragments in their seafood each year. So next time you bite into a piece of fish think about the plastic you may also be eating. How would you feel if you couldn’t eat fish without getting sick? That’s what it could come to

For many years plastic has been choking sea animals and harming or killing them!! According to, IFL Science “The whale discovered in the Netherlands is only the fifth whale confirmed to have died from ingesting plastic.” According to BTN “Each day around 3 and a half million pieces of plastic wash into the sea. Once there, they can harm marine animals that mistake plastic for food or get tangled in it.” A fact from Plastic Oceans “8 million tons of plastic waste ends up in the ocean every year.” In conclusion, when we don’t recycle when we need to, our animals get injured or

In the ocean, plastic debris injures and kills fish, seabirds and marine mammals. Marine plastic pollution has impacted at least 267 species worldwide, including 86% of all sea turtle species, 44% of all seabird species and 43% of all marine mammal species. The impacts include fatalities as a result of ingestion, starvation, suffocation, infection, drowning, and entanglement. For example, Leatherback turtles often mistake floating plastic bags for jellyfish. A plastic bag can cause a turtle to choke and eventually die. Our marine life is hurt as a result of our irresponsible actions and it's on our power to change

By the year 2050 plastic bottles will outnumber fish in the ocean. Last year a study by the National Academy of Sciences showed that there are over five trillion pieces of plastic currently littering the ocean. Many people believe that throwing away plastic would have negligible impact on humans and animals, this is untrue. Thousands of birds, turtle, seals, fish, and other marine animals die every after entangling themselves in or consuming the tons of plastic currently in the ocean. Plastic is such a durable material that according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, every single bit of plastic ever made still exists. The ocean has turned into our own personal landfill, affecting millions of lives. Organizations such as

There is a place called the Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, which weighs 7 million tons, and twice the size of Texas. This makes me feel disgusted that some humans don’t care about the environment. I am writing this essay, because it makes me frustrated that animals are dying, because of plastic we have created, accident, or on purpose, this is a huge problem. With this information, please spread awareness of saving wildlife and our oceans. I am going to be talking to you about the follow topics: First, what is the ocean trash problem, second, how does this ocean trash impact the health of our oceans and animals, and finally, what can we do to resolve this ocean trash problem. Let’s get started with figuring out why this ocean trash problem is

Technological advances have skyrocketed in this world in the recent decade. Smartphones can be used to browse the web, make calls, and take pictures. 3-D printing allows doctors, architects, and engineers to have a more efficient and accurate view of their work. Cars nowadays are faster, safer, and some even fuel efficient. All of these examples have aided people across the globe for the betterment of their overall lifestyle; however, it may be affecting other species’ lifestyle as well. Both of these advances are are made of or have content in it made of plastic. Yes, plastic has revolutionized this world completely, but is it beneficial to all? Plastic pollution is a huge threat to all marine life and its environment. Marine environment, health, and biodiversity are being negatively impacted due to human involvement of plastic pollution. In order to decrease this large pandemic, strict laws must be applied within the use of plastic all over the globe.

In the Pacific Ocean, there is an island made completely out of garbage. It is so big that it is called the Great Pacific Ocean Patch. Scientists even found that nine percent of the island is made up of dead fish. The patch weighs about seven million tons, which means that there are 630,000 tons of fish on that one island of garbage. Scientists also say that the patch could possibly double within the next ten years. The patch is estimated to be the size of Texas to twice the size of the continental United States (Moore). This issue needs to be resolved quickly and efficiently. One way to resolve it is to improve the level of waste management used across the world. Waste management is a solution to all kinds of pollution.

Besides being unsightly, plastic in the oceans cause major detrimental effects to marine life. Animals can get entangled or even die from ingestion. “Globally, at least 23% of marine mammal species, 36% of seabird species, and 86% of sea turtle species are known to be affected by plastic debris” (Sigler, 2014, p. 3). Some plastic in the ocean gets broken down into smaller pieces that become increasingly toxic, which then get eaten by fish, and following the food chain end up effecting human health (Reisser et al., n.d., p. 2).

Due to their regurgitation ability; most studies have focused on the ingestion of plastic pollution by bird, this does little harm to birds used in the studies. The effects of ingestible plastic on fish have not been studied as thoroughly and no studies have been conducted on filter-feeding organisms, which do not possess a feeding mechanism which would allow them to distinguish between plastic and plankton. Plastic pollution is only getting worse due to increasing population of developing countries. A wide variety of marine species is known to be harmed by plastic debris. This could threaten the survival of certain species, especially since many are sadly endangered by other types of anthropogenic actions.

Another reason people should help get rid of the trash around and in the ocean is because it can annihilate environments and climates. The Author states that the ocean is the main buffer against climate change,“In fact, about 25 percent of the greenhouse gases that we emit actually gets absorbed by the oceans, as does over 90 per cent of the extra heat produced by human-induced climate change, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports”(Baher). This shows that trash in the oceans are not only affecting wildlife but affecting the world also. Moreover, the trash is also affecting the environment. According to Yakupitiyage, “Because of ocean currents, this trash accumulates in what is known as "ocean garbage patches," located in virtually every ocean in the world….This has contributed to the massive piles of trash that have washed upon the shores of the isolated and once pristine Henderson Island in the South Pacific. A recent study found that the UNESCO world heritage site is covered with over 38 million pieces of trash, making it the most densely polluted place in the world.” As Yakupitiyage says, due to all of the trash, the oceans are making garbage patches that wash up on shores, which causes environmental damage. Consequently, trash in the oceans can cause catastrophic damage to the climate and the environment.