Have you ever seen trash island? Ordinary people think that it is an island where people dump their trash. This isn’t the cases, however. Trash island is an island that is made out of non-biodegradable plastic and other trash. It floats in the Pacific ocean about 100 miles from the coast of California. The objects that float into the island cause a massive threat to wildlife including sea turtles and sharks. This has already caused a mass extinction in some types of plankton and fish. Today it is a vast problem. Will there ever be a solution?
There are many problems that are caused by the trash island. One example is that the plastic doesn’t break down like other objects. When the sun hits the plastic is disintegrated into microscopic pieces that just float to the bottom of the ocean. These pieces are too small to see with the naked eye, so many people can’t
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For example, when the trash is broken down into the micro pieces they float in the ocean. During this time the sea creatures like jellyfish and clownfish are searching for plankton to consume. The micro pieces are the same size as plankton thus confusing the fish. They in return eat these pieces of plastic and it fills their stomach giving the illusion that its stomach is full. The plastic has no nutritional value, thus result is that the fish starve because they don’t eat anything else because their stomach is already full with plastic.
One sea create that is genuinely affected by the trash island are sea turtles. For example, plastic bags don’t break down fast, it takes years before they can start to break into pieces. When the bag is in the water, it floats around and occasionally acts like a jellyfish. This is one of the main meals that the sea turtles contracts. In the ocean a sea turtle will eat the plastic bag. This causes asphyxiation and starvation. This is why sea turtles are on the endangered
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 &
What would have it been like without the nuclear test on the Bikini Atoll? Would it have been good or bad? Let’s find out! The test on Bikini Atoll contained two tests named “Able” which is the Airdrop. And “Baker” which is the underwater tests. Both were deadly, inflicting immense damage upon the environment of Bikini Atoll. So if It was without these two tests what would happen? The US could may have not found a way to defend from another country’s atomic bomb if It were to happen. But we may just elaborate another solution to defend against other countries from bombing our place. So It would be a great idea to never have bombed Bikini Atoll.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is sometimes referred to as the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch and the Pacific Trash Vortex is a floating patch of garbage that has collected in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, which is located in the middle of two high-pressure areas between Hawaii and California. The majority of the garbage, which is also called marine debris, in the patch is plastic, but items made from other materials such as glass and rubber are also present. Though the garbage patch is too large and goes too deep under the surface of the ocean for scientists to determine exactly how much garbage is in it, they have collected up to 750,000 bits of plastic one square kilometer (CITE). This sort of debris floating around in the ocean is dangerous for several reasons. One important reason is that marine animals mistake some of the garbage, especially plastics, for food (CITE). Another reason that the floating debris is so dangerous is because it can block sunlight from reaching deeper levels of the ocean, and thus, it removes the energy source for many autotrophs like alga...
Harmfull Effects of Ocean dumping include animals in danger with trash in their habitat, as well as contamination of public waters.
Fifty-million plastic bags enter the Australian waters every year, causing the death of thousands of sea creatures. Imagine you went on a trip to the Great Barrier Reef. As you arrive, it is clear to see garbage floating on the ocean and you can only imagine what rubbish lies beneath the surface. This disturbs me! What are we doing to our beautiful, yet innocent marine life?
Recently, an uninhabited island in the South Pacific Ocean was found to be polluted with 38 million pieces of plastic that had been carried over by currents (Wang, “No one lives on this remote Pacific island”). The island, dubbed ‘trash island’, is home to diverse animal populations that have all been devastated by the pollution. On the beach, hundreds of birds were seen dead by reporters and scientists. When analyzed, the primary cause of death turned out to be consumption of plastic. When animals ingest plastic, it clogs their stomach and poisons their body with toxic chemicals. These toxic chemicals cause an array of issues, such as reproductive and endocrine problems. Eventually, this leads to death (Knoblauch, “The environmental toll of plastics”). But due to the nature of plastics, it can take hundreds or even thousands of years to completely degrade, meaning that as plastic pollution continues to build up, more places like ‘trash island’ will be discovered. According to conservation scientist Alex Bond, “…[The island] is just an indicator of what’s floating around out there” (Wang, “No one lives on this remote Pacific
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest garbage dump in the world. According to estimates made by experts, the patch holds approximately three and a half million tons of garbage. Majority of this garbage is made of plastic. This waste is a threatening problem to the patch’s surrounding wildlife. Many animals are caught in the floating pieces of trash and it is the cause of the deaths of about one million birds and about one hundred thousand other sea animals. Due to the oceans nature and constant moving currents, the trash is also constantly moving. Therefore the size of the patch never stays the exact same. However, scientists believe it be approximately two times the size of Texas. The plastic is mostly broken down from larger materials into small pieces. The patch has been referred to as one scientist as a, “plastic soup”. This garbage poses such a threat mainly because it does not biodegrade. These plastics will be in the ocean essentially forever. Many plastics also contain chemicals, and absorb other chemicals and pollutants they become exposed to. These newly absorbed toxins are then leaked and distributed back into the ocean over time. The chemicals can directly enter the bodies of the animals which consume them. A study was being conducted by scientists of the fish that inhabit the area around the patch. What the researchers found inside the belly of one fish (that was no larger in size than that of a finger), was eighty four small fragments of plastic. It does not take scientists to recognize the impact of this problem, Zach Gold, who is sixteen, is from Santa Monica California. Zach enjoys s...
Plastic bags kill thousands of marine animals. For example, in the text, “ Plastic Bags: Convenient and Cruel,” Lauren Magaziner says that marine animals mistake the plastic bags for food. If the marine animals swallow the plastic bags, it will block the digestive tract, causing a slow and agonizing death. Marine animals including sea turtles, seals, seabirds, dolphins, whales, and sharks die from these plastic bags. Also from the text, “ Plastic Bags: Convenient and Cruel,” Lauren Magaziner states that since bits of plastic are found in fishes stomachs that
We always hear "do not litter!" or "throw your litter in the bins", maybe some of you bored to hear that yet we still do not throw it in the correct place. Litter is a serious habit problem to just throw away objects on the ground or leave them lying on the ground, instead of putting them in the garbage can. In Indonesia, the amount of litter is 175.000 ton/day and this is increasing every day. But we don't have to see that far, just look around us, our campus, Sanata Dharma University is still facing the littering problems. Each day, although there are various spots of bins and it is never full yet there are many litters lying in the floor, you can see the student hall as the evidence that even though it has 10 spots of bins, we still find people throwing their litter everywhere.
There are other ways that the wildlife is affected by plastic pollution. Such as entanglement, this is most common in marine life, such as fish, seals, turtles, and birds. These animals get stuck in this debris and end up suffocating or drowning. Because they are unable to untangle themselves, they also die from starvation or from their inability to escape predators. On a report in 2006 called Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans, It was estimated that at least 267 different animal species have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. Some species are consumers of jelly fish, but often mistake plastic bags for their natural prey, which obstructs the esophagus of sea turtles therefore killing them. It has been estimated that about 400,000 marine mammals die annually due to plastic pollutions in the ocean. As said by Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra “One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure”. Air wildlife are also greatly affected by plastic pollution. Seabirds are a common example. Seabirds often mistake trash floating on the ocean’s surface as prey. Or often their food sources had already ingested plastic debris, thus transferring the plastic from prey to
People are hurting the animals, and they don’t realize it. That’s one of the issues that the people don’t realize what they are doing. All of the sea creatures about 100,000 marine animals and countless fish are being harmed by the floating plastics. Those animals die in the North Pacific every year from either eating the plastic junk or becoming ensnared, and even drowning in it. Since there is plastic in the ocean and it’s killing fish over time and from the over time it could actually make the fishes go extinct because we are throwing our garbage in the ocean, which is killing the species and affects the food chain in the ocean. Also, every people are eating plasticizing additives, drinking them, breathing them, and absorbing them through their skin every single day. Only 3 to 5 percent of plastics are recycled in any way. Which means each person tosses about 185 pounds of plastic every year. So, the plastic never really goes
While a beautiful sunset on the beach can be astounding, a spectacular scene is not the only benefit oceans provide. Without the oceans, we would not have adequate amounts of oxygen to breathe or enough protein to eat. The Earth's climate would not be inhabitable for human beings and many animals. The oceans supply medicines, food and drinking water which arise from ocean processes. Out of the five oceans, the Pacific Ocean is the world’s largest and deepest ocean. It spreads over an area of 165.2 million square kilometers. More than 25,000 islands float within the Pacific. Within the Pacific Ocean lies an unusual island, an island that is more than twice the size of Texas and is earth’s largest landfill, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (McLendon). Society is unaware that the excess use of plastic and other non-biodegradable materials has ended up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and is the main source of ocean pollution. The solutions, ranging from manual clean-up to eliminating any further obliteration to the Garbage Patch, will reduce the amount of effluence the world has to endure.
Can you imagine an ocean full of trash and plastic just floating, drifting, being carried effortlessly through the water? The sea creatures thinking the trash is food and eating it, consequently they are shortly after dying from consuming too much of the detritus. The marine life is suffering because their home is always full of trash as well as it being contaminated. They aren’t able to do anything about it. Can this really happen to the environment around us? Have people ever thought about this horrible problem and wanted to do something about it? This is actually what our world is facing right now. Progressively debris is ending up in the water, harming our beautiful blue ocean in addition to killing the sea life. No one is thinking about where their trash is going as well as how much it’s really harming the innocent marine life. Not only their trash, but also chemicals and other residential waste are going into the majestic deep blue sea. Everyone needs to do something to stop having all the trash go into the water polluting it. Ocean pollution is the cause of why all this trash as well as other dangerous things are ending up in the water. The marine life doesn’t have a voice to stop this happening to their home, but we do. We can help stand up for the aquatic under the sea, find a way to save their home, as well as make
Our planet is suffering from severe pollution, which ranges from contaminated air, water and soil as well. Humans are doing nothing to reduce the amount of pollution that is harming our earth. To understand how pollution works first you must understand that there are different types of pollution. The most common types of pollution and the ones that I will be focusing on which are the ones doing the most harm to our planet are air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and littering. In order to help out and reduce pollution in our planet people need to be more aware of what these problems are and about the severe damages that they are causing our planet. Before industrialization really jumped into place and had an effect on large cities, nature had its own way of cleaning up its own air and itself. Wind scattered gases, rain washed many substances and the rest dissolved into the ground; while plants absorbed carbon dioxide and made it into oxygen. With big cities growing more every time and with more towns that were becoming more industrialized a lot of more waste began to be released into the environment and the atmosphere and soon this was more than enough for nature to handle. In order to stop and reduce pollution people need to understand the damage that it is causing our environment and our planet as well. People need to be more aware of how they can help out and do their part in reducing these problems that are causing our planet to die slowly with people not even noticing it.
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