Who Is Captain Charles Moore's Our Oceans Are Turning Into Plastic. Are We?

Found on “34 Facts about Pollution”, the text says 14 billion pounds of garbage are dumped into the ocean every year and most of it is plastic. It makes you wonder why people do it? To act cool or to act like a complete idiot? As a result for oblivious behavior, we won’t be able to drink anywhere without some kind of trash in our water. And we won’t even be able to shower ourselves with out some plastic coming out from the faucet.

In the National Geographic article “Eight Million Tons of Plastic Dumped in Ocean Every Year”, author Laura Parker expresses how violent the simple act of dumping trash into the ocean really turns out to be. This article goes into depth telling exactly what plastics pollution is causing, where it’s mostly coming from, and what you can do to decrease this problem and help save both our planet and ocean wildlife.

The beauty of California is slowly fading away and as environmentalists would say, “There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surrounding” (Carson, 366). According to the findings revealed by research foundations in California, marine life is and has been in great danger as a result of plastic remains that accumulates in the Ocean. In his article Daniel Woods states, “Approximately eighty percent of remains found in Oceans are made of plastic that originates from urban runoffs such as plastic trash carried away from landfills, trucks, as well as garbage containers, marinas, ports and construction trash” (Wood, 20). Furthermore, these results also revealed that marine remains where made up of disposable plastic products that constitute food packaging as well as containers that are ever present and contain precious resources that can be used unsustainably. These issues have affected the state critically and have lead me to research the reasons behind the banning of plastic pollution, their economic impact, harm resulting from plastic pollution, as well as federal concerns on plastic contamination.

The garbage in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn’t only harmful to the aquatic animals that live inside it, but to the surrounding marine life as well. Several birds who depend upon fishing as their source of food are in just as much danger as the fish who live in the water. As Katherine Cooney, from the New York Times, states, “An Environmental Protection Agency study showed that the chicks that died of those causes had twice as much plastic in their stomachs. Bottle caps, combs, golf tees, toothbrushes and even toy soldiers were found inside the birds.” Cooney is trying to show that the death of these innocent birds is undeniably due to the plastic found in their bodies. An approximated 200,000 of the 500,000 chicks born there each year died from dehydration and starvation (Cooney).

In the article When the Mermaids Cry” The Great Plastic Tide by Claire Le Guern Lytle, she wrote “For more than 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics have continued to rise. An estimated 299 million tons of plastics were produced in 2013, representing a 4 percent increase over 2012, and confirming and upward trend over the past years” This means that more and more trash is added to the 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the ocean. Almost everything around us is made out of plastic, this is later misused and ending in the wrong place. The Center for Biological Diversity wrote “In the first decade of this century, we made more plastic than all the plastic in history up to the year 2000. And every year, billions of pounds of plastic end up in the world’s oceans. Most ocean pollution starts out on land and is carried by wind and rain to the sea. Once in the water, there is a near-continuous accumulation of waste.” Our plastic is misplaced and it escalates from there. However, plastic pollution hurts us as well. “Trash in the water compromises the health of humans, wildlife and the livelihoods that depend on a healthy ocean;” wrote a non-profit group called Ocean Conservation. If our oceans are covered in trash, everyone that relies on the ocean is going to suffer. The effect is not just in our health, it also affects our economy. Ocean Conservation also

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

Over the few years, humans have discarded millions of tons of garbage into the oceans. Ever wonder where the cup you threw out this morning will end up? Or the plastic spoon you used for lunch? How about the cap of a water bottle? The calamitous plastic ends up in the water, taking thousands of years to decompose. The consumption of plastic by the marine life is perilous and the leading cause of death for life on shore.

Plastic comes in innumerable shapes and sizes; it is used for various purposes. We use it to bag our groceries, pay with it, drink from it, occasionally eat off it or unwrap it to get to food, etc. The functionality of plastic is continual and surrounds us, so what is the con of plastic? When plastic cups, bottles, and bags are abandoned in the street, the wind transports and the rain seizes them into storm gutters, tributaries and eventually the ocean. When rubbish and plastic originate from terrestrial territory and enters the sea it is swept away by an eddy vortex called the North Pacific Gyre. Charles Moore discovered the North Pacific Gyre, or also known as “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in 1997. This garbage patch stretches hundreds of miles off the shoreline of California and Hawaii. Scientists estimated its size to be twofold the size of Texas or maybe even more substantial. This garbage patch contains some ten million tons of litter. According to Lindsey Blomberg, who wrote the article titled The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, writes, “What is known for certain is that the marine debris in the North Pacific Gyre is 80% plastic and it's mostly coming from land.” (1) Although the trash is in the ocean, it not only affects us but, wildlife on land or in sea too. Furthermost of the waste in the ocean consists of "microplastics" which according to Kitt Doucette, who wrote the article titled An Ocean Of Plastic is, “Larger chunks of waste that have been reduced to tiny

Plastic is one of the major resource humans use to pollute the earth. Some scientist believe that the more plastic being added to the ocean the more polluted it becomes. According to Tobias Kukulka, a physical oceanographer by University of Delaware stated in, Plastic below the Ocean Surface, "You have stuff that's potentially poisonous in the ocean and there is some indication that it's harmful to the environment, but scientists don't really understand the scope of this problem yet." What Tobias Kukulka is trying to tell us is that the more plastic we put into the ocean, soon it drifts from the ocean onto the surface and that’s causing animals to mistake plastic as food. Working with collaborators at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and University of Washington, Kukulka used computer modeling to look at the effect that waves,

According to Oceana, the agency in charge of protecting the world’s oceans, the number one pollutant in the North Pacific Gyre is still plastic. Oceana remains unsure of the quantity of plastic in the water. Our “need” for plastic has harmed innocent little creatures and ourselves as well when we should be searching for safer alternatives instead.

We all know that why oceans are important for us and why we need to take actions towards the preservation and keeping our oceans clean from plastic. In article “Our oceans are turning into plastic… are we?” Susan Casey has tried to inform the general audience about the problems caused by plastic in oceans. Susan Casey has strong credentials for writings this article because she already has wrote many works about the oceans and marine life such as The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks. Furthermore she also worked in editorial tams of two movies Into Thin Air and The Perfect Storm. So this shows that she is well experienced in writing works about oceans and marine life. Using her previous

Some people call the Pacific Garbage patch The Floating Island Of Trash. Well, it is trash, but not exactly an island like some people think-- It is more like trash soup located near Midway Island/Atoll. Midway is one third of the distance from Honolulu, Hawaii to Tokyo, Japan. Scientists estimate that it is now the size of America! This garbage patch is a collection of marine debris that is mostly made out of plastic. The debris collects in the pacific garbage patch due to a series of currents that create a circular effect like a toilet bowl and a spiral. These currents are called the gyres;the trash and debris gets trapped. Most of the trash is under the water, and much of it is so small you can not see it. NOAA, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association reported that," In 2008 plastic outweighs surface zooplankton 6 to 1." The garbage in Pacific Gyre is mainly plastic. There are plastic bottles, plastic caps, plastic computer parts just to name a few. There is not only one gyre in the ocean, there are 5. We have so much plastic that we should not be using. This plastic is effecting the ocean, animals, people, and our

In the documentary “Inside the Garbage of the World”, the main social problem being explained is that there has been a great influx of plastic and other type of garbage in oceans and their beaches. This buildup of pollution has largely affected the wildlife population ranging from animals on the beaches to the creatures of the ocean. In oceans, what is called ‘garbage patches’, a large buildup of garbage that flow to one area in the oceans, are being created. Approximately 50 percent of all plastic sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor but about 2 times that much is actually already on the ocean floor. In fact, according to the documentary, there is a garbage patch that is to the left of California that is the size of half of the United States. Each year, about 4.7 million tons of plastic goes in the ocean a year and it is estimated that by 2050, there will be another 33 billion tons of plastic added to the present amount. Eighty percent of the current pollution comes from the land. According to marine researchers, twice as much plastic debris is one the ocean floor than it was 10 years ago. In the futures, plastic will break down into smaller pieces of plastic, creating a bigger problem from the habitat. This plastic pollution is one of the leading cause for beach and ocean inhabiting creatures be extinct because animals are mistaking these plastic pieces for food. When scientist began to dissect beach animals such as birds, they discovered that at least fifteen pounds of

Recycling and going green has been at the forefront of everyone's mind for the last 10 years. It has become a major concern to able to preserve the planet and reverse some of the damage that society has been inflicting over the last two hundred years. Everyone's concerned with emissions and electric cars but the world is in fact over two-thirds water. So naturally what society should be concerned about should be the oceans in the pollution and negative human impact that people have placed on them. Part of the problem as an initial estimate of the amount of plastic is not accurate. Not to mention incredible environmental and ecological effects the plastic has on marine life. Ocean plastic has reached a critical level where human intervention needs to take place.

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