Max K. Period 8/9 Mrs. Garza 4/4/24. 6.3 billion metric tons of plastic have been thrown into the ocean worldwide. And we can stop this. The plastic in the ocean is causing the ocean to be ruined, and if humanity keeps going the way they are, our kids and grandkids will never experience the ocean as this generation can. Even though this is happening, there are ways mankind can fix this problem. Picking up plastic, creating robots, and many other things can contribute to cleaning our oceans. Plastic is ruining the ocean by killing animals, plants, and polluting the water. Plastic and other things are causing animals and wildlife to rapidly deplete. Erosion and other things are also causing problems. Don’t believe me. Just read the article and read it. …show more content…
Not only are our animals getting killed, but so are our plants. “In some areas, we’ve seen live coral cover go down to as little as 1%,” says Stephanie Kettle. She works at the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota.” (6 Nargi). Not only plastic or erosion are causing our problems. Climate change is interfering with our ocean life as well. The Narwhals face an uncertain future. For centuries, sea ice has blocked most ships from the Arctic Ocean. But scientists predict the ocean will be ice-free in a few decades. Then ships will roam the narwhals’ habitats. The noise of the ships may drown out the whales’ clicks.” (12 Zajac). Now that we’ve gone over everything, you might think that’s it. But plastic isn’t done. They break down into “microplastics.” “Sunlight and saltwater will slowly break you down into tinier and tinier pieces. Some of these pieces will float around in the ocean for centuries. (In the year 2500, some of these pieces may still exist.) Other pieces will be eaten by fish, sea turtles, and birds. Many of these animals will get sick. Some will die.” (4 Carro). All of these evidence pieces show how our ocean is getting ruined. Our main problems are microplastics and erosion. The negative
Society is highly dependent on plastic. Unfortunately, eight tonnes of plastic are thrown away every year and most ends up in the ocean. The short documentary “A Plastic Tide” looks at various places throughout the world whose beaches are littered with plastic. Mumbai, India is one of the first places the documentary focuses on. They refer to the beach as a “plastic graveyard” because there is plastic everywhere causing almost no sand to be seen. Afroz Shah began the world’s biggest beach clean and inspired community members to take action. The documentary makes sure to point out that plastic is not the problem. While plastic may be convenient for us, it is not good for marine life. It is single-use plastic that is causing the most harm. Single-use plastics are discarded within the year and only about 5% of it is effectively recycled.
Which means their obviously bad for the aquatic marine life environment & are cause many different forms of damage for them & us as one. On p.g. 23 of The New York Times upfront magazine “Birds,fish, sea turtles, & others are getting tangled in plastic bags or mistake them for food & choke”. Someone else might argue that they could the plastic bags in landfills instead of oceans. But that counter- argument is flawed because you’re just polluting by burning plastic which is bad on our part we’re not doing our part to support & taking care of the earth. Plastic in the ocean isn't just bad for plants & animals but for humans too because of the food chain some of us eat animals as a meat source such as aqua marine life like fish. If the fishermen catch fish that have been eating plastic then it's in our food supply if we eat that fish it's gonna be bad for us so many will end up getting sick from the plastic inside of the fish then what will we do our aqua marine food supply will go down the drain we couldn’t eat the fish since it's basically contaminated with plastic that we’re dumping there instead of trying to fix it & getting rid of plastic bags for good for the good of the earth. We’re causing damage towards the earth by dumping all that plastic into the ocean which damages our water supply it’ll poison us although we clean the water it depends on how big the plastic particles are, it’ll make us sick & sense it’s been lying in the oceans could bring in new pathogens &
Every year, an estimated 8 million tons of plastic waste enters our environment, severely polluting oceans, beaches, forests, and even the towns and cities we live in. In the ocean alone, it is believed that 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic pollutes the waters (“Plastic Statistics”, Ocean Crusaders).The majority of plastic pollution can be traced back to single-use items, such as grocery bags, bottles, and plastic packaging. According to United Nations Environment, “At the rate we are dumping items such as plastic bottles, bags and cups after a single use, by 2050 oceans will carry more plastic than fish…” (“UN Declares War on Ocean Plastic”, UN Environment). This pollution is a major problem and endangers not only the environment, but human
This pollution problem is so ubiquitous plastic can be found throughout the marine environment from coastlines to near shore lagoons to remote ocean hotspots where plastics caught up in marine currents. And gathered up into huge garbage patches that swirl
There’s more than 14 billion pounds of plastic and garbage is dumped into the oceans in the United States. Ocean pollution could be a thing of the past if people stopped littering, oil spills were prevented or contained, and if people weren’t allowed to use oil wells where natural water is. Pollution is still a major issue especially in China and Japan.
Water pollution has had devastating effects on the environment, which include irreversible effects to the oceans ecosystem. People often underestimate the importance of the ocean. They don’t realize how much damage pollution has caused to the ocean and the thousand of creatures that inhabit it. Earth is a huge place, but resources are actually very limited and will not last forever; unless there is a balance. We must protect the resources we have in order for them to last into the next generation. Every time we throw away a plastic bottle, drive our cars, and even burn those millions of fossil fuels to operate all those huge factories, there is a chance it will pollute the ocean and eventually effect the way we live. There should be stricter laws regulating human pollution, in order to protect our oceans ecosystem.
Millions and billions of tons of plastics are dumped, lost or making their way into the ocean. In 2016 it was estimated that 23 million metric tons of plastic waste entered the water system. Though this is a lot, this does not take into consideration non-plastic waste, marine debris, lost fishing gear and vessels. In recent years, we have been trying to create a resolution to the ocean dubbing problem that has risen from 5 billion to 10 billion. Industrial waste is one of the most unthought of contributors to water pollution.
Oceans are such so vast that people underestimate the impact their actions —seeming so insignificant— have on them. Humans have by and large taken the oceans for granted; not considering how important a healthy ocean is to our survival. A popular mind-set is that the oceans are a bottomless supply of fish, natural resources, and an infinite waste dump. There are myriad reasons why the oceans should be saved and the most obvious one is marine life. With 71% of the Earth being covered by water, it is obvious that sea creatures are predominant form of life, making up 80% of the species of life on Earth. However, as important as marine life is, that is not the only reason why saving the oceans is crucial. The ocean floor provides natural resources such as, oil, natural gas, petroleum, minerals, medications, and ingredients for foods and products. The economic benefits of the oceans are huge and significant, as well. Fishing and fish products have provided employment to 38 million people and have generated about $124 billion in economic benefits. However, oceans are on the verge of crisis, marine life, natural resources, transportation, the economy, and important ingredients are at risk due to overfishing, pollution, and acidification. Thus, in this essay I will argue that, oceans are not impervious to human activity and threatening the health of the ocean threatens the health of humanity, since oceans key to our survival.
The world population is living, working, and vacationing along the coasts. They are contributing to an unprecedented tide of plastic waste. Pollution is defined as the process that alters a substance or molecule on planet earth, the pollution is caused by the physical contact of an organic decaying particle with a clean particle in the same spot, at the time the two particles join together is when occurs pollution in which the environment is greatly altered. Too many, plastic is a modern day miracle, versatile, inexpensive and durable (Rochman 2014). To others, it is a scourge, a non-degradable pollutant that threatens to choke the global environment. Plastic pollution has led to the deaths of many animals, natural resources, and people (Rochman 2014). It is time to change America’s thinking and to learn from past mistakes.
Gia Dinero Period 8-9 Mrs. Garza 4-4-2024 Humans are destroying the earth. Nearly every human on earth has contributed to pollution in some sort of way, without even knowing. Thousands of pounds of plastic and trash are tossed into the ocean every day. Causing everything in and around the ocean to suffer. There are many causes of ocean pollution, but overall the majority of them are due to humans and their impact.
Research from the University of California San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography said that species in the ocean consume a projected 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic every year in the Pacific Ocean (Nall, 2014). Pollution of recyclable materials in the oceans is one of the leading causes of why some marine species are nearing extinction. Many authors of articles and books analyzing this topic tend to agree that pollution of our oceans is a problem. The future of this problem is where their ideas tend to differ. The following four literature reviews attempt to demonstrate and support my belief that pollution is getting worse in the ocean and more marine life ecosystems are being affected, but there are things that we as humans can do
The earth’s ocean is an amazing place. It provides for not only itself but for the animals that live on land. For the past several centuries society lacked the knowledge to truly understand the impact that it had on the environment. We exploited and abused the resources that the ocean provided and we caused havoc in the ecosystem. The current generation of young adults has a different mindset. The political leaders of today are trying to reverse the damage that they have cause and to some extent the ocean is recovering. However, the current generation is focusing on how to prevent these damages from happening rather focusing on how to solve them. Although there has been damage that is irreversible, we the right changes society can immensely benefit the ocean and start to take care of its resources.
Did you know that more than 90 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth are extinct? According to Pandey, the author of Humans Pushing Marine Life toward ‘Major Extinction’, nearly 10,000 species go extinct each year, and this rate is estimated to be 1,000 times higher than the natural extinction rate (1). Human beings are causing irreversible damage to the oceans and their wildlife, which is being led by two major reasons: Commercial fishing or over-fishing, which damaged the marine environment and caused a loss in the marine life diversity, and pollution, which is a primary way of the extinction causes that drastically modifies the marine life habitat. As a result of the commercial fishing and pollution, many of the marine species will start disappearing of the oceans. Briggs emphasizes that over-fishing “has induced population collapses in many species. So instead of having less than a hundred species at risk, as was the case some 30-40 years ago, there are now a thousand or more (10).”
It is sad to say but humans have played their part in deteriorating the earth. We have polluted and killed the very thing that takes care of us. If you ride by any lake or river you find trash and debris around it. In the “The Call of the Wild” the author says that we have committed war against the earth by the dumping of poisons and explosives upon it (337). Unfortunately, plastics are the things that are doing the most harm to our environment. Plastics are convenient and we use them everyday and these are the things that we find in the oceans, rivers and lakes. They are harmful to the earth as well as human health by directly intoxicating us with lead, cadmium and mercury. Plastic debris laced with harmful chemicals are often found inside of our marine life and can poison them. Plastic can survive for thousands of years and many invasive species are found in them which can disrupt our habitats. We need to limit our consumption of plastics and make sure that they are disposed of in their proper places.
The most common type of pollution harming the oceans is plastic bottles. Pollution can be prevented by merely reusing, reducing, and recycling. Plastic is not malleable which can be useful for humans, but harmful to the environment. In the ocean, plastic is dangerous due to the heat and the sea life. The plastic already in the ocean breaks down into little tiny pieces due to the heated water. The fish mistake the small pieces of plastic with food getting poisoned or suffocated by the accumulated pieces. The ocean also provides food for birds, the plastic in the fish accumulates in the bird and has the same outcome, death. If recycling helps reduce the damage we must take action and reuse, reduce,