The Ocean Pollution

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.

In the article, "Plastic in Our Oceans", Kimberly Amaral discusses the everyday uses of plastic and how it can be beneficial to humans, but harmful to marine life. As fishermen casually dump waste overboard, animals mistake it for food sources, such as a turtle mistaking a plastic grocery bag for a jellyfish. From the trash brought out to sea, gyres, large circulations of water, carry the garbage through currents, spreading it to all over the ocean, specifically to the central gyre. Amaral notes common ways for marine life to die from plastic, which include entanglement by plastic rings, consumption of plastic bags and pellets which stuff the intestines and lead to health problems, and suffocation. As researchers today work hard to discover

In 1988, it was determined that the United States alone, was producing 30 million tonnes of plastic per year (Derraik, J.G.B., 2002). This can be compared with the global and annual production of 260 million tonnes of plastic as of 2012 (Pearson, E., 2014). Plastics are lightweight, durable, and cheap to make. This makes them incredibly easy to sell and manufacture. However, these attributes are many of the reasons why plastics are the most prominent type of marine debris, and why they are a serious hazard to various ecosystems and the organisms that live within them (Derraik, J.G.B.,

One of the issues that is currently harming the ocean is the presence of pollution. Studies have shown that over the past thirty years, people have increased their use of plastics and synthetic materials and recently it has become even more abundant (Laist). The amount of plastic debris that has entered the ocean is partially due to people 's inability to properly dispose of plastic and waste. This has immeasurable effects on the physical ecosystem, as well as the creatures who inhabit it. While plastic is very buoyant, it takes a very long time to degrade, and it is usually eaten by

It is not just marine animals, from planktons to whales, which ingest microplastics. It can end up in humans when they eat seafood.

Microplastic is used in so many types of beauty products all over the world. Lots of Microplastic gets washed down the sink and into the ocean. People don't think of this because of the mental thought 'out of sight out of mind'. But Microplastic is causing many problems to many oceans and great lakes. This will affect the aquatic food chain from the tiniest plankton to us humans.

Walking through the traditional grocery store, consumers find hundreds of plastic items to make their lives more convenient. Individually wrapped pop tarts, plastic zip lock bags to store sub sandwiches for lunch, deodorant cases, plastic combs to groom hair, diapers, and soda bottles. Unless specifically requested to carry a cloth bag, even the bags we use to carry our groceries home are produced plastic. To society, these are items of convenience and not necessity. But to marine animals that reside in our ocean, they can be a hazardous warzone, “which ends up polluting our oceans and killing millions of birds and fish and more than 100,000 sea turtles, according to the Sierra Club”(D.G.22). Plastic whether it is a syringe,

Ocean pollution can be separated into two different categories: large plastic and microplastics. Large plastic can be anything from nets, buoys, or ropes used and forgotten by fishermen, to glass, plastic bags and rubber used by the everyday Americans (Eriksen, 154). This plastic can be described as the more visual type of pollutant. This type of plastic is also very

Ocean pollution has been a difficult thing to measure and for the public to be concerned about. Most of the concern has only ever been on the shore level where people can physically see pollution collecting. There is a difficult to get people interested and a problem that happens hundreds of miles out where very few people will ever see the plastic collecting on the surface of the ocean. Funding for research to acquire accurate numbers on plastic pollution understand how it affects the environment of these marine organisms has probably been delayed because of the lack of interest people have trouble associating why the oceans are important for them. The truth currently there are no actual models to estimate the distribution of plastic the ocean, these models use data from surface

Zooplankton are a tiny marine creature that can ingest pieces of plastic that are smaller the one millimeter in size. Normally in a marine environment the faecal pellets transport nutrients and carbon in the deeper parts of the ocean where animals eat it thinking they’re getting food that will help them but in reality they are just taking in pieces of plastic. A new study showed that the faecal pellets that contain microplastic sink slower than the faecal pellets without the microplastic in it. With the pellets that sink slower it gives marine life a greater opportunity to eat it. (Plankton Feces Could Move Plastic Pollution to the Ocean Depths)

There is also proof that shows the effects on marine animals such as, when ingesting microplastics it led to a lower food uptake and reduced energy reserves and effects on other physiological functions.

Subsequently, microplastics in the ocean are consumed by seabirds that mistake the plastic for food. Plastic debris in the ocean releases a gas- sulfur compound dimethyl sulfide,

We 're treating the oceans like a trash bin: around 80 percent of marine litter originates on land, and most of that is plastic. Plastic that pollutes our oceans and waterways has severe impacts on our environment and our economy. Seabirds, whales, sea turtles and other marine life are eating marine plastic pollution and dying from choking, intestinal blockage and starvation. Scientists are investigating the long-term impacts of toxic pollutants absorbed, transported, and consumed by fish and other marine life, including the potential effects on human health.

It was interesting to note when analyzing microplastic abundance that only microplastic fibers were found. As the majority of macroplastics found were substances that upon degradation would not be broken down into fibers, but microscopic plastic pieces or nurdles. In several other previous studies where high-levels of microplastic pollution were analyzed in mountain lakes, fibers were not the most abundant microplastics found (Free, 2014). Instead, small plastic fragments made up the majority of microplastics that were found. The reason that these hard microplastics were not found was due to the fact that the majority of the macroplastics that would have degraded into these smaller microscopic plastic fragments were absent or removed from the beaches except for Torrey Pines, whose macroplastic abundance was previously discussed. There was also a variety of differing fiber colors among

While bans have been signed into law and several groups and coalitions have arisen to advocate continued research into the adverse effects microplastics, there is still thousands of tons of micro-bead pollution present in aquatic reservoirs such as the Great Lakes. Such a mass of plastics, which are able to migrate with currents to new locations and settle into the sea floor, has left researchers and environmentalists alike unsure of how to resolve their current accumulation in global waterways. Some groups have experimented with mechanically filtering out beads from water using meshes or skimming techniques, but the amount of microplastics is so great that mechanical filtration may not capture all particles or even most. However, there are some novel resolutions being researched to eliminate plastic pollution using bacteria isolated from the environment that can breakdown plastic polymers. In addition, to curb