The Ocean is filled with rubbish and plastic. Sadly, not many people are helping.
When people throw rubbish into the street, it can be washed into the sea by drain water. Even worse, some people throw litter directly into the sea!
Most of the pollution it plastic, as it takes more than centuries to rot and become compost. If we stopped and cleaned the oceans, not only would the oceans become cleaner, but there would be lots more marine wildlife as the rubbish can kill millions of creatures every year.
Before, it was assumed that because the ocean was so vast and deep that the effects of dumping trash and litter into the sea would only have minimal consequences. But as we have seen, this has proven not to be the case. While all four oceans have suffered as a result of human activity for millennia by now, it has accelerated in the past few decades. Oil spills, toxic wastes, floating plastic and various other factors have all contributed to the pollution of the ocean. Did you know:
1.Marine life often eats rubbish after mistaking it for food.
2.Each day thousands of tons of trash and waste are dumped into the oceans of the world.
3.Discarded fishing nets kill approximately 300,000 dolphins and porpoises every year. The dolphins and porpoises get tangled in the nets and die.
4. There is an ocean garbage site off the coast of California twice as large as the state of Texas. It is called the North Pacific Gyre and is the largest ocean garbage site in the world.
5.The plastic debris that reaches the ocean is capable of absorbing the toxic chemicals polluting the water.
6.Over 1 million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals are killed by pollution every year.
7. More-acidic waters also contribute to the bleaching of coral reefs, and make it harder for some types of fish to sense predators and others to hunt prey.
8. Sound waves travel farther and faster in the sea’s dark depths than they do in the air, and many marine mammals like whales and dolphins, in addition to fish and other sea creatures, rely on communication by sound to find food, mate, and navigate. But an increasing barrage of human-generated ocean noise pollution is altering the underwater acoustic landscape, harming—and even killing—marine species worldwide.
9. In addition to noise pollution, the oil and gas industry’s routine operations emit toxic by-products and lead to thousands of spills in U.S. waters annually. That oil can linger for decades and do irreversible damage to delicate marine ecosystems.
While a paper bus ticket takes 2-4 weeks to break downing the ocean, and banana peel takes up to 2 years, plastic bottles take 450 years to break down and plastic bags take around 20 years.