The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) has caused a lot of problems. People have come up with ideas as to how we can fix the problem in a cost effective and plausible way. One of the major concerns is the wildlife in the oceans. Marine biologists use devices such a waterproof cameras to track the movements and habits of marine life. This may allow us to see how the trash is affecting the animals in their habitats but can be disrupted if there is to high of a concentration of trash in the water. Marine biologists also use biostatistical programs and microcomputers to enter in information that tracks the animals. It can be shared with other scientists. While marine biologists and animal rescue teams are saving animals lives…
In the Article, Plastics in our Oceans, Alison Pearce Stevens discusses about the problem of plastic in the ocean. According to the article, Plastic is a very big problem. Even worse plastic is difficult to degrade. This leads to the millions of trash and plastic wind up in the ocean every year. The author then reports that, a group of scientist, from Spain, conducted an experiment where at 141 locations they dropped a net and collected little pieces of plastic.…
Do you know about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an issue that needs to be brought to attention. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has happened because people's trash get in the ocean instead of going where it belongs.The effects of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can be destructive to the nature around it. Some things are being done about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch such as plastic bags being banned.…
The article “Trashing the Oceans,” by Thomas Hayden, which was published in U.S. News and World Report, states how the oceans are being polluted by the trash going within it. Another article “Managing Marine Plastic Pollution,”John H. Tibbetts, was published in Environmental Health Perspectives, demonstrates how the pollution is greatly impacting the ocean. The article “Trashing oceans” utilizes ethos, logos, and pathos in a superior manner as compared to “Managing Marine Plastic Pollution” because it holds factual information and draws the reader’s interest.…
In addition to the environment, marine animals mistakenly eat plastic bags due to people’s littering, which keeps killing ocean wildlife. The clean and blue oceans in California always attract tourists to spend time enjoying it during their holiday. Nonetheless, trashes littered by people gather together in the oceans due to ocean current, and plastic bags play a key role. As plastic bags dissolve, it forms a collection of marine debris, which forms Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Generally speaking, Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a lot of marine debris is collected together by the ocean current. People can distinguish this garbage easily, but marine animals don’t have this ability. According to California Coastal Commission, marine debris harms…
Garbology: Our Dirty Love Affair with Trash is a non-fictional work written by Edward Humes, in which he demonstrates the effects of waste which human’s have relentlessly produced over the previous decades. In chapter 6, Nerds vs. Nurdles, Humes exhibits the damage that half a century of careless consumption has had on the environment and ecosystems. Our society today has been blind to its surroundings as a product of consumer apathy and does not realize the detrimental effects of our wasting until it is too large a task to resolve. Society neglects to think beyond the extent of the present and the potential consequences and harms materials could bring once we decided that it is no longer beneficial and toss them out. Scientists cannot even begin to predict the approximate amount of plastic nurdles that floats within the ocean. Without any awareness of the amount of trash, it makes the mission of cleaning the ocean impossible. An individual’s never satisfied hunger for the newest technology continually swells the ocean with increasing plastic. Synthetic material is viewed as a necessity for making everyday life easier. Ironically, plastic gradually finds a path back to harm society that appreciates it so greatly. Through bio-magnification, plastic finds a way back to humans through the consumption of seafood; additionally humans ingest chemicals from synthetics which aquatic animals previously consumed. As plastic remains in the oceans it will continually find a path up the food chain, consequently humans will inescapably ingest their own trash through fish and crustaceans which occupy large portions of daily diets. Consumers also avoid the most detrimental aspect of ocean dumping, the result it has on phytoplankton, microscopic organisms that account for virtually 50% of oxygen. By blindly consuming and creating more garbage, civilization is inadvertently suffocating itself. The lacks of concern consumers and producers have for disposal methods are not…
When the single-use plastic shopping bag was introduced to consumers worldwide in the mid 1960s, a time when governments encouraged their economies into extravagant consumerist lifestyles, I doubt the general population considered the consequences these bags would have on our environment. These bags revolutionized commercial industry by providing us with lightweight, water-resistant, flexible bags for a hassle-free shopping experience. We so thoroughly adopted the practice of consumption that by 2004 an estimated 4 to 5 trillion bags were produced globally, with Northern America and Western Europe accounting for more than 80% of the use of this product (Behind the Scenes). Were the plastic bags to end up solely in landfills, they would compare better even than paper bags for their effect on the environment since neither type decomposes well in such a situation. These innocuous seeming bags, however, often times go where they should not. They can be found washed up along coastlines, tangled in tree limbs, clogged inside gutters and water outflows, wrapped around fences, and even caught in the throats of animals mistaking the bags for food. It is documented that over 267 species of animals have been found suffering from entanglement and ingestation of plastic marine debris (Ocean in peril). Every year, tens of thousands of whales, birds, seals, and turtles die from contact with ocean-borne plastic bags. Even if the bag manages to disintegrate somewhat (even though estimates place decay happening over a 1,000 year period) it poses a threat to smaller marine life that accidentally ingest toxic chemicals contained in the plastic particles. While some manufacturers have taken it upon themselves to exert an effort in reducing these environmental hazards, such as introducing bags made of biodegradable material, the “disposable” plastic shopping bag remains as one of the most epic global dilemmas of our generation.…
We have all heard about how we are killing our oceans and how the coral and fish are suffering. We also hear how we have to clean the beaches, use eco-friendly materials and do our part to help, but does anyone ever tell us what is really happening in the oceans or how to help? In the article “11 Billion Pieces of Plastic Are Ridding Corals with Disease”, published in The Atlantic in January of 2018, Ed Yong interviews two microbiologists, Joleah Lamb and Rebecca Vega Thurber, on how plastic is destroying our coral reefs. The plastic cuts off oxygen and light from the coral casing many different kinds of diseases. Thurber gives some solutions how we can help solve this problem. For example, controlling how much plastic is made locally and how we dispose of plastic that is used. Yong makes several points by using…
Are we killing our oceans? This is the proposed question of Dahr Jamail in his article Oceans of pollution. He details several environmental pollution issues facing the waters of the world, from large floating plastic islands to hypoxic zones in which sea life cannot breathe. His thesis is that humanity’s inability to deal with plastic waste is causing harmful problems in the ocean to rise, which could lead to serious negative effects on the planet. He conveys the current scientific consensus and directs it towards an audience that is unaware or ignorant of these issues.…
The majority of the trash in the GPGP is floating pieces of plastic. Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic produced each year on Earth, approximately 10% ends up in the ocean. Plastic will never biodegrade, but rather it photodegrades. Any piece of plastic thrown into the ocean will break into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic without breaking into simpler compounds. Plastics are also able to absorb and trap toxic chemicals whenever they come in contact.…
According to www.sciencedaily.com, in 2008 there was so much garbage they had 378,000 volunteers help cleanup garbage. Also garbage causes pollution and climate change and habitat destruction. Each year garbage kills over a million animals. From some garbage wrapping around animals flippers and amputating them. Additionally garbage can cut marine life and create infections. Also ocean currents have been carrying debris into all major oceanic gyres (spiral or vortex) for decades. They recorded a tin entered in the ocean In 1986 and will decompose until 2036. That is why everyone should recycle.…
They gave it the name “the Great Pacific Garbage Patch” , because of all the trash in the ocean. The Pacific Ocean is only a collection of garbage today. Because of the large amount of plastic in the ocean the plastic does not disintegrate. It breaks down into tinier pieces until it is smaller than the size of plankton. “The sea floor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers and ecologist recently discovered that about seventy percent of marine debris actually sinks into the bottom of the ocean “ (National Geographic.org) About eighty percent of the debris comes from Asia and North America. The remaining comes from boaters and cargo ships that dump or loose garbage right into the ocean. Scientist have collected up to 750,000bits of microplastics in a single square kilometer in the…
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.…
Chelsea Rochman is an ecologist at the University of California that has been trying to answer many unclear questions about ocean garbage and just how badly it’s affecting the ocean and marine life. Rochman believes that a lot of the supposed “threats” that scientists say ocean garbage pose had not been tested at all, and that the scientists had an insufficient amount of information to prove that the debris is doing or going to do exactly what they claim. Rochman and her colleagues studied over a hundred papers on the subject of ocean garbage and it’s effects. Eighty-Three percent of the perceived threats of ocean garbage were, in fact, proven true by scientists, while for most of the remaining 17%, the studies were simply too low-quality and…
Every year, more than 300 million tons of plastic is made, this poses as a threat when you take a look at how much of this plastic is only intended to be used once and thrown away. Throughout the entire planet, plastics are being used more often and are being thrown away rather than using the recycling bin. When you throw these plastics away, they are taken to a landfill which often times will bury the garbage underground; nevertheless, although you can no longer see the plastic waste, it is still taking a toll on our health. Burying these products creates issues with the ground water that we humans, as well as our pets and other animals, drink from. When the plastics are buried in landfills, they have the potential to leak harmful chemicals into the ground water. Not only do these plastics effect our ground water, but they often times will find their way to the ocean if the landfill is found near a beach. The trash that has found its way to an ocean can float for thousands of…