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United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)

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I got this video to tell us how not to get plastic in the sea and how to save animals.

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How We Can Keep Plastics Out of Our Ocean | National Geographic

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Every day approximately 8 million pieces of plastic pollution find their way into our oceans. There may now be around 5.25 trillion macro and micro plastic pieces floating in the open ocean. Weighing up to 269,000 tonnes. Plastics consistently make up 60 to 90% of all marine debris studied.

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With so much seafood now containing plastic, the question is no longer are we eating plastic, but how bad is it for our health? In seawater, plastic absorbs chemicals like PCBs and DDTs which have been linked to endocrine disruption and even some cancers, becoming more powerful as they work their way up the food chain. Microplastics have now been found in human blood and disturbingly known to pass from mothers to their unborn children through the placentae.

The beach is where we go to connect with nature. It's simply not the same if it's covered in plastic. And with coastal tourism worth £5.5 billion to the UK economy, many of us count on it being clean for our livelihoods.

Even if you don't eat fish or go to the beach, everybody breathes. And all that essential oxygen? Marine plants produce a massive 70% of it.

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Immerse yourself in plastic trash and its shocking impact on our blue planet to better understand the big issues at play.

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When did Humans Start Polluting the Earth?

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When did Humans Start Polluting the Earth?

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The ice provides a detailed record of more than 1,000 years of South American history that can inform discussions of the Anthropocene timeline. Did it spread out through South America with the trace bits of pollution from the Incas’ bismuth bronze? Or the lead concentrations from increased smelting upon the Spanish arrival? Or perhaps the more dramatic pollution created in the era of amalgamation marks the turning point.

This discovery suggests that our new epoch emerged sporadically through space and time, at different points during human history. Only as we connect the Quelccaya ice core to records elsewhere on Earth can we assemble a clearer picture of the dawn of the Anthropocene.

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When did humans start polluting the Earth?

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The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Incorporated as a not-for-profit foundation in 1971, and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the Forum is tied to no political, partisan or national interests.

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NEW STUDY FINDS 88 PERCENT OF EARTH’S OCEAN SURFACE NOW POLLUTED WITH PLASTIC 

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NEW STUDY FINDS 88 PERCENT OF EARTH’S OCEAN SURFACE NOW POLLUTED WITH PLASTIC 

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A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that at least 88 percent of the Earth’s ocean surface is polluted with plastic debris. (1) The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Cadiz, Spain as well as the University of Western Australia. These findings obviously raise very large concerns surrounding marine life, climate, food chains and much more.

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A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that at least 88 percent of the Earth's ocean surface is polluted with plastic debris. (1) The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Cadiz, Spain as well as the University of Western Australia. These findings obviously raise very large concerns surrounding marine life, climate, food chains and much more.

Plastic materials were introduced in the 1950′s, and ever since, the total global production of plastic has increased exponentially and will continue to do so over the coming decades unless we change our ways and figure out something new.

The study is based off of 3,070 total ocean samples that were collected all around the globe, and the total amount of plastic in the open-ocean surface is estimated to be between approximately 7,000 and 35,000 tons. Although this amount is huge, scientists were surprised as it is much lower than the amount they expected.

Even more astonishing is the fact that millions of tons of plastic should be floating around in the world's oceans. The 88 percent headline in the title only accounts for 1 percent of the total plastic that we have in the ocean.

"We can't account for 99 percent of the plastic that we have in the ocean." - Carlos Duarte, Professor of Biology at the University of Western Australia, participating researcher in the study.

So where is all of the plastic that's unaccounted for? A large percentage of it has been (and continues to be) eaten by marine mammals of all size, including fish. The study explains that when plastic is floating around in the open ocean, waves and radiation from the sun can fragment it into smaller and smaller particles until it becomes so small that it looks like fish food.

"Yes, animals are eating it, that much is indisputable." - Peter Davison, Oceanographer at the Farallon Institute for Advanced Ecosystem Research

I published an article earlier this year about whales showing up dead on multiple beaches around the world with stomachs full of plastic. You can read that full article HERE.

Other explanations for the disappearance (according to the study) are shore deposition, nano-fragmentation and bio-fouling.

According to the study, the highest amount of plastic is found in the North Pacific Ocean. This is all due to human beings, and the high population on the eastern coast of Asia, the most densely populated coast in the world. The study also mentioned five major concentrations of ocean plastic junk. One is located west of the United States (the Pacific Ocean), another between the United States and Africa ( Atlantic Ocean), thirdly, just west of the southern tail of South American (the Pacific Ocean) and finally, east and west of southern Africa (the Atlantic and Indian Oceans).

"We are putting, certainly by any estimate, a large amount of a synthetic material into a natural environment. We're fundamentally changing the composition of the ocean." - Kara Lavender Law, from the Sea Education Association.

Below is a video I've used in another article I published last year that relates to this topic. The North Pacific Gyre is North East of Hawaii where the ocean currents form a giant whirl pool of debris found around the Pacific. It's one of the largest ecosystems on Earth that comprises of millions of square kilometers.

Today, it's better known as "The Great Garbage Patch," an area the size of Queensland, Australia where some estimate there to be approximately one million tonnes of plastic spread throughout the ocean.

Here is a quote from the photographer (of video below) Chris Jordan:
"I had been studying for quite a while the phenomenon called the Pacific garbage patch. I was looking for a way to visualize it, it was really surreal to land on Midway, seeing that my worst hopes of what I would find there are true. These are all albatross chicks, hatched out of their eggs and the very first meal they got was deadly to them. What happens is, when the eggs hatch one of the parents goes out and flies looking for food. They search over this vast area of the pacific and what they come back with is a belly full of toxic plastics, and they feed that to their babies. They die of starvation, malnutrition and choking. Simply allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel about this, without jumping to the way to solve it. Because I think we really need to feel these things, even if the feelings are uncomfortable, because those are the feelings that will turn into the fuel and drive passionate action."
What Can We Do?

I definitely believe that the collective desire to change these things will put the human race on the correct path to do so. If the intent is in the majority of our hearts, it will manifest into reality. That being said, we need to talk about solutions, action and implementation. We need to educate ourselves about the choices we make, question why we do the things we do, the way we do them, and start realizing that it doesn't have to be this way.

First and foremost, the amount of waste each one of us produces when it comes to plastic and other articles of trash can be controlled to some extent by US. Try to think a little deeper about what you are buying and whether you need it. Maybe there are products that you can buy with less waste. Use reusable bags or find other uses for plastic bags you already have to keep them out of land fills and oceans. As consumers we vote with our dollars. When you can, make more eco-friendly choices.

There are young creative minds all over the world working towards bettering our world. Not long ago, 19-year-old Boyan Slat revealed his plans to the world regarding his Ocean Cleanup Array that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world's oceans. You can read more about that HERE.

Another solution could be making products with non-toxic hemp. Hemp has over 50,000 uses, you can find out more information about that HERE.

Navy ships could develop a method for locating and dragging nets for clean up, various solutions exist that could be used and implemented. I wish I had the answers, and could provide more solutions and information on how we could do this. I know that if the world's 'leaders' came together and really wanted to pool their resources to clean up this planet, it could easily be done. Instead, they often pool their resources to destroy it for our materialistic wants.

Solutions to many of the world's problems exist in various forms.

The human race has become very detached from nature. We still don't realize that our potential to create a world where everybody's needs are provided for, where we live in balance with nature and all living things on the planet is infinite. We could easily utilize technology and human genius to live in a world where everybody can thrive, where we could take the human race out of its adolescence into adulthood.

It can be done, and there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel. Our planet is currently experiencing a massive worldview transformation, we live in exciting times, so keep your head up, and be the change you wish to see in the world. It starts with you!

Sources:

(1) http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/06/25/1314705111.full.pdf+html?sid=379d3657-ed7d-44ad-88ba-97f6af9bb2aa
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/06/ninety-nine-percent-oceans-plastic-missing http://rt.com/news/169564-ocean-surface-covered-plastic/

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New Study Finds 88 Percent of Earth's Ocean Surface Now Polluted With Plastic Trash

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A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that at least 88 percent of the Earth's ocean surface is polluted with plastic debris. (1) The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Cadiz, Spain as well as the University of Western Australia.

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The pollution often comes from nonpoint sources such as agricultural runoff, wind-blown debris, and dust. Nutrient pollution, a form of water pollution, refers to contamination by excessive inputs of nutrients. It is a primary cause of eutrophication of surface waters, in which excess nutrients, usually nitrates or phosphates, stimulate algae growth. Many potentially toxic chemicals adhere to tiny particles which are then taken up by plankton and benthic animals, most of which are either deposit feeders or filter feeders. In this way, the toxins are concentrated upward within ocean food chains. Many particles combine chemically in a manner highly depletive of oxygen, causing estuaries to become anoxic.

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Marine pollution occurs when harmful, or potentially harmful, effects result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural, and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Eighty percent of marine pollution comes from land. Air pollution is also a contributing factor by carrying off pesticides or dirt into the ocean.

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occurs when harmful effects result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural, and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Eighty percent of marine pollution comes from land. Air pollution is also a contributing factor by carrying off pesticides or dirt into the ocean. Land and air pollution have proven to be harmful to marine life and its habitats.[1]

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Marine pollution occurs when harmful, or potentially harmful, effects result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural, and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Eighty percent of marine pollution comes from land. Air pollution is also a contributing factor by carrying off pesticides or dirt into the ocean.

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Plastic pollution: can the ocean really be cleaned up?

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Plastic pollution: can the ocean really be cleaned up?

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So the idea of attempting to “clean up” the ocean is a quixotic one. Can these projects really make a difference?The answer is yes, but not as expected.

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omewhere in Hilo, on Hawaii's Big Island, a team of scientists and engineers are tending to The Ocean Cleanup's 600-metre-long rubbish-herding device, after its maiden voyage to the Great Pacific garbage patch was cut short in December 2018, because it fractured into two pieces.

The project has had its fair share of problems since it was unveiled in May 2017 and has been criticised by marine scientists and environmental groups for its potential negative environmental impact. However, some still herald The Ocean Cleanup for having a positive effect on plastic pollution.

Pete Ceglinski, the Australian co-founder and chief executive of the Seabin Project - plastic-cleaning devices deployed in harbours and marinas - is one. He credits Boyan Slat, the inventor behind The Ocean Cleanup, with increasing the global awareness of the ocean plastics issue over the past six years.

But marine biologist Dr Jennifer Lavers from the University of Tasmania says that argument is also the project's downfall. "I think that's really dangerous," Lavers says. "It gives people a false sense of hope that this team of people have got [plastic pollution] covered, and that we just need to throw some money at the problem."

Plastic pollution is a devastating problem for the world's oceans and marine life. According to the UN, about 8m tonnes of plastic waste is dumped in the seas annually. It has been discovered at the deepest point of ocean, in Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean, and in Australia, CSIRO scientists found microplastics in the sediment of the Great Australian Bight. Last year Guardian Australia reported that scientists now believe "plastic is literally everywhere."

So the idea of attempting to "clean up" the ocean is a quixotic one. Can these projects really make a difference?

The answer is yes, but not as expected.

Smaller technical solutions can make an impact in a localised area. Two rubbish-sucking Seabins were recently installed in Sydney's Darling Harbour. The devices suck in water, trapping rubbish in a mesh bag, and recirculate the water back into the environment. There are 450 Seabins in 26 countries around the world, in 60 harbours throughout the US, Europe, and now the Asia-Pacific, collecting on average around 4kg of marine litter a day - or about 1.4 tonnes a year, according to Ceglinski.

Another local installation, known as Mr Trash Wheel, is making a difference in Baltimore's Inner Harbour, on the US's north-east coast. As the wheel turns, it collects litter from the harbour and stores it in a barge for later removal. "It's such a great idea," says Lavers. "If we could get something like that in major cities that have suitable harbours, it would be transformational."

Lavers, who has been studying ocean plastics for the past 15 years, says these are good examples of small-scale cleanups that can have a local impact.

However, she warns that can't be extrapolated to the open ocean or the global plastic crisis. "We can't technology our way out of this," she says. "What we really need is policy change, and behavioural change, and that's just starting to happen."

"Things have changed rapidly in the last 12 to 18 months, it's been really encouraging. We have the EU announcing enormous bans on single use plastics and microplastics - that's the bold, meaningful change we need."

Hobart city council recently announced it would ban single use plastics by 2020, while Launceston city council has pledged to do the same. The South Australian government is considering how to tackle single-use plastics and sought public comment on the issue earlier this year.

The Department of the Environment and Energy recently conducted an assessment of the voluntary phase-out of microbeads - and found it to be on track. Its Threat Abatement Plan for the impacts of marine debris on the vertebrate wildlife of Australia's coasts and oceans was also updated. And while Woolworths and Coles were banning single-use plastic bags nationwide, fast-food giants McDonald's committed to phasing out plastic straws in their Australian stores.

What those cleanup projects such as The Ocean Clean Up, Seabins and the Baltimore Water Wheel are good at is increasing awareness of the plastic problem. Says Ceglinski:"The real goal is to stop plastics from entering the water in the first place. And we can do that using the Seabin as a powerful communication tool.

He adds: "We don't want people to be okay with throwing plastic in the water because the Seabin will pick it up for them. This was one of the main reasons we set out to attack it from an educational point of view - because it all boils back down to education."

So, like Seabins quietly sucking away in harbours, community and individual cleanup action plays a role too. When you add up the numbers, at least in Australia - the potential impact of picking up rubbish on beaches is huge. "There's around 50,000 volunteers across Australia who participate regularly in beach cleanups", says Lavers.

"One single plastic bottle removed from a beach prevents it from making its way back into the ocean where it will eventually fragment into tens of thousands of micro- and nano-plastic particles. So there's value in getting bigger items off the beach while we still can, because once they become tiny fragments in the marine environment, we have little to no hope of ever retrieving them, at least not with current technology."

In Australia, Tangaroa Blue is one of the main groups that organises regular cleanups, along with Clean Up Australia, Seaside Scavenge, environmental conservation groups such as Sea Shepherd, while Ocean Conservancy organises global beach cleanups.

Heidi Taylor, co-founder and managing director of Tangaroa Blue Foundation, says cleanups must go hand in hand with reducing plastic consumption. "If all we do is clean up, then that's all we'll ever do. We have to stop debris and plastic ending up in the environment in the first place through source reduction."

The data collected from beach cleanups give groups such as Tangaroa Blue the power to hold industry and producers accountable for their role in the plastic problem. "The cleanup is how we collect evidence," says Taylor. "Volunteers don't just pick up and count rubbish, they also record brands and barcodes - data which can be used to target the sources."

Taylor noticed a difference in the beach cleanup data, after the single-use plastic bags ban came into force. "We're just seeing more thicker bags, and now we know where they're coming from because they're branded, whereas before they were all grey. "

On 4 March, the Australian Marine Debris Initiative (AMDI) ticked over 13 million data points - each representing an item of marine debris picked up from an Australian beach with its details logged by a volunteer.

Lavers is using the AMDI data to determine whether the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (Marpol) - which prevents the dumping of plastic and other waste from ships - has been effective since its ratification in 2013. "Asking this question is only possible because of Tangaroa Blue and other contributors to the AMDI. There's no way we can write off beach cleanups as some small, meaningless contribution to the global plastic pollution problem."

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Plastic pollution: can the ocean really be cleaned up?

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omewhere in Hilo, on Hawaii's Big Island, a team of scientists and engineers are tending to The Ocean Cleanup's 600-metre-long rubbish-herding device, after its maiden voyage to the Great Pacific garbage patch was cut short in December 2018, because it fractured into two pieces.

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A plastic bag can kill numerous animals because they take so long to disintegrate. An animal that dies from the bag will decompose and the bag will be released, another animal could harmlessly fall victim and once again eat the same bag.

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Ocean pollution getting worse - Urgent need to cut plastic usage

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Ocean pollution getting worse - Urgent need to cut plastic usage

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We have reached the no-more point with plastics too, but replacing them will be a huge challenge as they are central in so many aspects of our lives. One sobering report suggests that the plastic in our oceans weighs more than all the fish in those oceans.

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BACK in the day when everyone had an Uncle Dan with a farm, Dan and his peers' working lives were changed utterly by dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane - or DDT as it was called at the creamery teach-ins. For years, it was used as an insecticide with abandon. Then its dark, dangerous side was discovered. For decades, we used asbestos in buildings, but then its dark, unsustainable side was uncovered. For years, we drove diesel cars for economic reasons and because we

believed they were the best option for the environment. Then the emissions scandal broke and diesel cars sales seem in an irreversible decline.

We have reached the no-more point with plastics too, but replacing them will be a huge challenge as they are central in so many aspects of our lives. One sobering report suggests that the plastic in our oceans weighs more than all the fish in those oceans.

NUI Galway has found that 73% of the fish they analysed had microplastic in their stomachs and at some of the highest levels recorded so far. That the fish had been collected from depths of 300 to 600 metres in the north-west Atlantic shows how serious the problem has become. A lot of the plastic we use is an indulgence - plastic water bottles or one-use food wrapping - so it's time we used our power as consumers to cut plastic use because it is far more dangerous than DTT or asbestos. Wake up and smell the plastic, as it were.

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Ocean pollution getting worse - Urgent need to cut plastic usage

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
BACK in the day when everyone had an Uncle Dan with a farm, Dan and his peers' working lives were changed utterly by dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane - or DDT as it was called at the creamery teach-ins. For years, it was used as an insecticide with abandon. Then its dark, dangerous side was discovered.

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88 Percent

New Study Finds 88 Percent of Earth's Ocean Surface Now Polluted With Plastic Trash. A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that at least 88 percent of the Earth's ocean surface is polluted with plastic debris.

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A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that at least 88 percent of the Earth's ocean surface is polluted with plastic debris. (1) The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Cadiz, Spain as well as the University of Western Australia. These findings obviously raise very large concerns surrounding marine life, climate, food chains and much more.

Plastic materials were introduced in the 1950′s, and ever since, the total global production of plastic has increased exponentially and will continue to do so over the coming decades unless we change our ways and figure out something new.

The study is based off of 3,070 total ocean samples that were collected all around the globe, and the total amount of plastic in the open-ocean surface is estimated to be between approximately 7,000 and 35,000 tons. Although this amount is huge, scientists were surprised as it is much lower than the amount they expected.

Even more astonishing is the fact that millions of tons of plastic should be floating around in the world's oceans. The 88 percent headline in the title only accounts for 1 percent of the total plastic that we have in the ocean.

"We can't account for 99 percent of the plastic that we have in the ocean." - Carlos Duarte, Professor of Biology at the University of Western Australia, participating researcher in the study.

So where is all of the plastic that's unaccounted for? A large percentage of it has been (and continues to be) eaten by marine mammals of all size, including fish. The study explains that when plastic is floating around in the open ocean, waves and radiation from the sun can fragment it into smaller and smaller particles until it becomes so small that it looks like fish food.

"Yes, animals are eating it, that much is indisputable." - Peter Davison, Oceanographer at the Farallon Institute for Advanced Ecosystem Research

I published an article earlier this year about whales showing up dead on multiple beaches around the world with stomachs full of plastic. You can read that full article HERE.

Other explanations for the disappearance (according to the study) are shore deposition, nano-fragmentation and bio-fouling.

According to the study, the highest amount of plastic is found in the North Pacific Ocean. This is all due to human beings, and the high population on the eastern coast of Asia, the most densely populated coast in the world. The study also mentioned five major concentrations of ocean plastic junk. One is located west of the United States (the Pacific Ocean), another between the United States and Africa ( Atlantic Ocean), thirdly, just west of the southern tail of South American (the Pacific Ocean) and finally, east and west of southern Africa (the Atlantic and Indian Oceans).

"We are putting, certainly by any estimate, a large amount of a synthetic material into a natural environment. We're fundamentally changing the composition of the ocean." - Kara Lavender Law, from the Sea Education Association.

Below is a video I've used in another article I published last year that relates to this topic. The North Pacific Gyre is North East of Hawaii where the ocean currents form a giant whirl pool of debris found around the Pacific. It's one of the largest ecosystems on Earth that comprises of millions of square kilometers.

Today, it's better known as "The Great Garbage Patch," an area the size of Queensland, Australia where some estimate there to be approximately one million tonnes of plastic spread throughout the ocean.

Here is a quote from the photographer (of video below) Chris Jordan:
"I had been studying for quite a while the phenomenon called the Pacific garbage patch. I was looking for a way to visualize it, it was really surreal to land on Midway, seeing that my worst hopes of what I would find there are true. These are all albatross chicks, hatched out of their eggs and the very first meal they got was deadly to them. What happens is, when the eggs hatch one of the parents goes out and flies looking for food. They search over this vast area of the pacific and what they come back with is a belly full of toxic plastics, and they feed that to their babies. They die of starvation, malnutrition and choking. Simply allow yourself to feel whatever it is you feel about this, without jumping to the way to solve it. Because I think we really need to feel these things, even if the feelings are uncomfortable, because those are the feelings that will turn into the fuel and drive passionate action."
What Can We Do?

I definitely believe that the collective desire to change these things will put the human race on the correct path to do so. If the intent is in the majority of our hearts, it will manifest into reality. That being said, we need to talk about solutions, action and implementation. We need to educate ourselves about the choices we make, question why we do the things we do, the way we do them, and start realizing that it doesn't have to be this way.

First and foremost, the amount of waste each one of us produces when it comes to plastic and other articles of trash can be controlled to some extent by US. Try to think a little deeper about what you are buying and whether you need it. Maybe there are products that you can buy with less waste. Use reusable bags or find other uses for plastic bags you already have to keep them out of land fills and oceans. As consumers we vote with our dollars. When you can, make more eco-friendly choices.

There are young creative minds all over the world working towards bettering our world. Not long ago, 19-year-old Boyan Slat revealed his plans to the world regarding his Ocean Cleanup Array that could remove 7,250,000 tons of plastic waste from the world's oceans. You can read more about that HERE.

Another solution could be making products with non-toxic hemp. Hemp has over 50,000 uses, you can find out more information about that HERE.

Navy ships could develop a method for locating and dragging nets for clean up, various solutions exist that could be used and implemented. I wish I had the answers, and could provide more solutions and information on how we could do this. I know that if the world's 'leaders' came together and really wanted to pool their resources to clean up this planet, it could easily be done. Instead, they often pool their resources to destroy it for our materialistic wants.

Solutions to many of the world's problems exist in various forms.

The human race has become very detached from nature. We still don't realize that our potential to create a world where everybody's needs are provided for, where we live in balance with nature and all living things on the planet is infinite. We could easily utilize technology and human genius to live in a world where everybody can thrive, where we could take the human race out of its adolescence into adulthood.

It can be done, and there is indeed light at the end of the tunnel. Our planet is currently experiencing a massive worldview transformation, we live in exciting times, so keep your head up, and be the change you wish to see in the world. It starts with you!

Sources:

(1) http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/06/25/1314705111.full.pdf+html?sid=379d3657-ed7d-44ad-88ba-97f6af9bb2aa
http://news.sciencemag.org/environment/2014/06/ninety-nine-percent-oceans-plastic-missing http://rt.com/news/169564-ocean-surface-covered-plastic/

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New Study Finds 88 Percent of Earth's Ocean Surface Now Polluted With Plastic Trash

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A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that at least 88 percent of the Earth's ocean surface is polluted with plastic debris. (1) The study was conducted by researchers from the University of Cadiz, Spain as well as the University of Western Australia.

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How many animals die from trash in the ocean?

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How many animals die from trash in the ocean?

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The Problem: Over 1 million marine animals (including mammals, fish, sharks, turtles, and birds) are killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean. Currently, it is estimated that there are 100 million tons of plastic in oceans around the world.

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Information About Sea Turtles: Threats from Marine Debris

The Problem: Over 1 million marine animals (including mammals, fish, sharks, turtles, and birds) are killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean ( UNESCO Facts & Figures on Marine Pollution). Currently, it is estimated that there are 100 million tons of plastic in oceans around the world. It is expected that another 60 billion pounds will be produced this year alone. In some areas, the buildup of plastics is estimated to span 5 million square miles. To put it into perspective, that is the equivalent of the area of the U.S. plus India. How does that much plastic get there? Eighty percent of the plastic debris comes from land. It washes out to sea from our beaches, streets and highways. It flows out through storm drains into streams and rivers. It flies away from landfills and into the stomachs of sea turtles everywhere. Most of the debris is recognizable. Plastic bags, bottles, balloons, degraded buoys, packaging materials and food wrappers all contribute to the debris. While large plastics are a substantial pollutant, over time these plastics will break down into smaller, more toxic pieces. Not only are these small plastics more easily ingested, but they also act as hosts for invasive species, carrying them to other regions of the ocean exponentially increasing the damages caused by plastics. In addition, certain plastic contains toxic additives that are distributed into the water and enter into the food chain.

Many turtles, that have been killed by consuming debris, had plastic bags or fishing line in their stomachs, some as small as half of a fingernail. Sea turtles are especially susceptible to the effects of consuming marine debris due to their bodies' own structure. They have downward facing spines in their throats which prevent the possibility of regurgitation. The plastics get trapped in their stomach, which prevents them from properly swallowing food. Also, many sea turtle rehabilitation facilities commonly deal with "bubble butts," turtles that float as a result of trapped gas caused by harmful decomposition of marine debris inside a turtle's body. The gases cause the turtle to float, which leads to starvation or makes them an easy target for predators.

Species Affected: All species of sea turtles, adult green turtles to a lesser degree, are affected by marine debris. Juvenile green turtles are heavily affected by marine debris.

The Solution: Education is important to solving marine pollution. The public can get involved in this issue by:

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle plastics;

Use reusable cloth bags instead of plastic bags when shopping;

Support local, regional and nationwide bans on plastic grocery bags;

Don't litter. Instead, volunteer at local beach clean-up events;

Make sure to properly secure your garbage to prevent any fly-away plastics;

Don't release balloons into the air. They travel far and end up in our oceans being consumed by sea turtles that mistake them for food.

Case Study: Cities and countries all over the world are now considering or implementing bans on plastic bags. Canada, Australia, the U.S. and Europe, for example are all considering bans or other measures to reduce consumption. In Ireland, plastic bags have been taxed since 2002, estimating a reduction in plastic bag use by almost 90 percent. And in January 2008, China's State Council put a nationwide ban on plastic bags. The cabinet has demanded all stores go plastic bag-free after June 1. Not only will this reduction have a positive impact on the environment, but it is estimated that it will save China's 37 million barrels of oil.*

*Drilling for oil also causes sea turtles harm in the form of pollution from spills.
Related links:

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Information About Sea Turtles: Threats from Marine Debris - Sea Turtle Conservancy

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The Problem: Over 1 million marine animals (including mammals, fish, sharks, turtles, and birds) are killed each year due to plastic debris in the ocean ( UNESCO Facts & Figures on Marine Pollution). Currently, it is estimated that there are 100 million tons of plastic in oceans around the world.

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Study: Plastic Waist in the Pacific Is getting Worse. 

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Study: Plastic Waist in the Pacific Is getting Worse. 

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Plastic debris typically collects in one of five “patches” around the world. The largest such repository, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, has amassed so much plastic pollution that if it was heaped together it would amount to twice the size of Texas, according to research by Ocean Cleanup, a Dutch nonprofit.

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Plastic Waste in the Pacific Is Growing 'Exponentially'

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Plastic debris accumulating in the Pacific Ocean has exponentially increased since the 1970s, a new study shows

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Some of these chemicals enter the sea through deliberate dumping. For centuries, the oceans have been a convenient dumping ground for waste generated on land. This continued until the 1970s, with dumping at sea the accepted practices for disposal of nearly everything, including toxic material such as pesticides, chemical weapons, and radioactive waste.

Chemicals also enter the sea from land-based activities. Chemicals can escape into water, soil, and air during their manufacture, use, or disposal, as well as from accidental leaks or fires in products containing these chemicals. Once in the environment, they can travel for long distances in air and water, including ocean currents.

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Land based pollutants include oil, septic sludge, dirt, and trash. Each day thousands of tons of trash and waste are dumped into the oceans of the world. Ocean pollution kills more than one million sea birds each year. Discarded fishing nets kill approximately 300,000 dolphins and porpoises every year.

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Ocean Pollution Facts

Ocean pollution occurs when potentially harmful or harmful sources of pollution reach the water. These sources of pollution can include residential waste, industrial waste, agricultural waste, chemicals, particles, and invasive organisms. Most of the sources of ocean pollution originate on land, from runoff, blowing debris, dust, and contamination from excessive nutrients, toxins such as pesticides and metals, and particles. Many of the most harmful ocean pollutants are not the ones we can see, but instead are the ones that leach into the marine ecosystem, causing diseases and mutations, not only in the marine life but in the humans and animals that consume them.

Some of the ocean pollution that we can see includes floating plastic, oil spills, and trash.

Plastic is one of the most common ocean pollutants. It does not break down rapidly and marine life often eats it after mistaking it for food.

Land based pollutants include oil, septic sludge, dirt, and trash.

Each day thousands of tons of trash and waste are dumped into the oceans of the world.

Ocean pollution kills more than one million sea birds each year.

Discarded fishing nets kill approximately 300,000 dolphins and porpoises every year. The dolphins and porpoises get tangled in the nets and die.

Much of the waste that is dumped into the ocean will wash up on the coast polluting everything it comes into contact with, including beaches, animals, and sea life.

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 garbage site in the ocean in the world.

Although oil spills pollute the ocean, they only account for approximately 12% of the oil polluting the ocean. The rest reaches the oceans from land, through drainage.

Toxic metals reach the ocean and contribute to ocean pollution, destroying reproduction, behavior, growth and the biochemistry of the ocean's marine life.

The plastic debris that reaches the ocean is capable of absorbing the toxic chemicals polluting the water. The sea life that consumes the plastic is then poisoned. Because plastic never completely disappears and breaks down into smaller pieces, it is often seen as food to marine life.

Radioactive waste and industrial waste such as acids and toxins often reach the ocean adding to the pollution and substantial loss of marine life.

The ocean's oxygen content is depleted by the runoff of fertilizer that causes an increase of algae growth.

When little sea creatures consume toxins in their food, they absorb those chemicals. They are then consumed by larger marine animals. The amount of toxins is concentrated in the larger marine animals. This continues up the food chain until the largest sea creatures have such extreme contamination, often millions of times higher than the water itself.

There are dead zones in the oceans that have been created by pollution making life in those zones impossible for marine or plant life.

It is estimated that every square mile of ocean has more than 45,000 pieces of plastic floating in it.

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Ocean pollution occurs when potentially harmful or harmful sources of pollution reach the water. These sources of pollution can include residential waste, industrial waste, agricultural waste, chemicals, particles, and invasive organisms. Most of the sources of ocean pollution originate on land, from runoff, blowing debris, dust, and contamination from excessive nutrients, toxins such as pesticides and metals, and particles.

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How many animals die from trash in the ocean?

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How many animals die from trash in the ocean?

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Overall ecosystem health is gravely affected by the accumulation of trash and plastics in our oceans. Marine debris ingestion and entanglement directly impacts marine life. Additionally, the mere presence of marine debris can disrupt an entire food web through its indirect impacts.

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There are 13 times more plastics pieces in the ocean than stars in the Milky Way. Plastic does not decompose but breaks into smaller micro-plastics.

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Garbage patches are large areas of the ocean where litter, fishing gear, and other debris - known as marine debris - collects. They are formed by rotating ocean currents called “gyres.” ... Instead, the debris is spread across the surface of the water and from the surface all the way to the ocean floor.

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What and Where Are Garbage Patches?

Garbage patches are large areas of the ocean where litter, fishing gear, and other debris - known as marine debris - collects. They are formed by rotating ocean currents called "gyres." You can think of them as big whirlpools that pull objects in. The gyres pull debris into one location, often the gyre's center, forming "patches."

There are five gyres in the ocean. One in the Indian Ocean, two in the Atlantic Ocean, and two in the Pacific Ocean. Garbage patches of varying sizes are located in each gyre.

The most famous of these patches is often called the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch." It is located in the North Pacific Gyre (between Hawaii and California). "Patch" is a misleading nickname, causing many to believe that these are islands of trash. Instead, the debris is spread across the surface of the water and from the surface all the way to the ocean floor. The debris ranges in size, from large abandoned fishing nets to tiny microplastics, which are plastic pieces smaller than 5mm in size. This makes it possible to sail through some areas of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and see very little to no debris.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California. It is the most well known patch. While some areas of the patch have more trash than others, much of the debris is made of microplastics (by count). Because microplastics are smaller than a pencil eraser, they are not immediately noticeable to the naked eye. It's more like pepper flakes swirling in a soup than something you can skim off the surface. You may come across larger items, like plastic bottles and nets, but it's possible to sail through some areas of a garbage patch and not see any debris at all. Garbage patches are huge! It's difficult to determine an exact size as the trash is constantly moving with ocean currents and winds.

The Impact of Garbage Patches on the Environment

Garbage patches, especially the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, are far out in the middle of the ocean where people hardly ever go. Because they are so remote, it can be hard to study them. Scientists rarely get to see the impacts of garbage patches on animals first hand. So far, we know that marine debris found in garbage patches can impact wildlife in a number of ways:

Entanglement and ghost fishing: Marine life can be caught and injured, or potentially killed in certain types of debris. Lost fishing nets are especially dangerous. In fact they are often called "ghost" nets because they continue to fish even though they are no longer under the control of a fisher. Ghost nets can trap or wrap around animals, entangling them. Plastic debris with loops can also get hooked on wildlife - think packing straps, six-pack rings, handles of plastic bags, etc.

Ingestion: Animals may mistakenly eat plastic and other debris. We know that this can be harmful to the health of fish, seabirds, and other marine animals. These items can take up room in their stomachs, making the animals feel full and stopping them from eating real food.

Non-native species: Marine debris can transport species from one place to another. Algae, barnacles, crabs, or other species can attach themselves to debris and be transported across the ocean. If the species is invasive, and can settle and establish in a new environment, it can outcompete or overcrowd native species, disrupting the ecosystem.

Garbage Patches and Human Health

We don't know whether, or how, garbage patches are impacting human health. Generally speaking, we know that humans may be exposed to microplastics from a number of sources, such as seafood, sea salt, tap water, beer, and even honey. However, we do not know how or if humans are impacted by this. Plastic microfibers can also be transported in the air and found in household dust (e.g., from furniture, carpet, clothing etc.), so exposure from seafood and other ocean sources may be small in comparison. The research community is actively exploring this issue.

Marine debris in garbage patches can have other impacts. For example, it may also cause damage to vessels and be a navigation hazard. Marine debris can be difficult to see in the ocean if it's floating below the water surface. A boat moving through the water can hit the debris, possibly resulting in costly vessel damage. Nets can become entangled in propellers and clog intakes.

What Happens If Nothing Changes?

The answer is that we do not know. The locations and sizes of these garbage patches are not likely to change very much any time soon. However, the amount of debris may continue to grow as more and more debris enters our ocean each year. This growth will likely worsen current impacts on the environment, navigation, vessel safety, and the economy.

How Do We Get Rid of Garbage Patches?

It may not be possible to entirely get rid of garbage patches. Some of the material will take a very long time to break down in the environment, while other materials, like plastics, may never fully go away. Large debris, like fishing nets, can be removed by people, but debris in the garbage patches is also mostly made up (by count) of plastic pieces smaller than 5mm in size. The debris is also continuously mixed by wind and wave action and is spread from the surface all the way to the ocean floor. Since these microplastics are so small in size, constantly being mixed, and spread out, it would be very difficult to remove them. Finding a cost effective technological solution which can take on these challenges is an extremely daunting task. Unfortunately, we will be dealing with this problem for the foreseeable future.

Here at the NOAA Marine Debris Program, we focus on marine debris prevention and removal from shorelines and coastal areas where debris is easier to pick up. Prevention is key to solving the marine debris problem over time. If you think about an overflowing sink, the first step before cleaning up the water is to turn the tap off. That is exactly how prevention works. By acting to prevent marine debris, we can stop this problem from growing.

To prevent marine debris, we need to understand where it is coming from. It's hard to identify specific sources, but we know that marine debris can enter our waterways and ocean in a variety of ways. Ineffective or improper waste management, dumping or littering, and stormwater runoff all lead to marine debris. If we want to "turn off the tap," everyone, including government, businesses, and people like you, will have to make some meaningful changes. We are the problem, and so we must also be the solution

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Learn more about what garbage patches are, their impacts on the ocean, and what we can do about them.

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The majority of the garbage that enters the ocean each year is plastic—and here to stay. That’s because unlike other trash, the single-use grocery bags, water bottles, drinking straws, and yogurt containers, among eight million metric tons of the plastic items we toss (instead of recycle), won’t biodegrade. Instead, they can persist in the environment for a millennium, polluting our beaches, entangling marine life, and getting ingested by fish and seabirds.

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Covering more than 70 percent of our planet, oceans are among the earth's most valuable natural resources. They govern the weather, clean the air, help feed the world, and provide a living for millions. They also are home to most of the life on earth, from microscopic algae to the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. Yet we're bombarding them with pollution. By their very nature-with all streams flowing to rivers, and all rivers leading to the sea-the oceans are the end point for so much of the pollution we produce on land, however far from the coasts we may be. And from dangerous carbon emissions and choking plastic to leaking oil and constant noise, the types of ocean pollution that humans generate are vast. As a result, collectively, our impact on the seas is degrading their health at an alarming rate. Here are some ocean pollution facts that everyone on our blue planet ought to know.

Ocean acidification

When we burn fossil fuels, we don't pollute just the air but the oceans too. Indeed, today's seas absorb as much as a quarter of all man-made carbon emissions, which changes the pH of surface waters and leads to acidification (pH is a measure of how acidic or basic water is). This problem is rapidly worsening-oceans are now acidifying faster than they have in some 300 million years. In absorbing so much of the carbon emissions from the atmosphere, the pH level of the ocean surface has increased an estimated 30 percent since the start of the industrial revolution 200 years ago. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, the surface waters of the ocean could be nearly 150 percent more acidic by the end of the century.

So what happens when the ocean's chemistry is knocked out of whack? Marine ecosystems-and the coastal economies that depend on them-go out of whack too. Take reefs and shellfish, for starters. To build their shells and skeletons, creatures like mussels, clams, coral, and oysters require calcium carbonate (the same compound found in chalk and limestone). But the ocean's carbonate levels go down when acidity levels rise, threatening the survival of these animals. Bivalves are at the bottom of the food chain, so these effects ripple up to many fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. More-acidic waters also contribute to the bleaching of coral reefs and make it harder for some types of fish to sense predators and for others to hunt prey.

Meanwhile, ocean acidification threatens us land dwellers too. The billion-dollar American shellfish industry is the economic backbone of myriad coastal communities, from Louisiana to Maryland to Maine. In the Pacific Northwest, the shellfish that are vulnerable to ocean acidification make up more than 60 percent of the fishery revenue. In total, the U.S. shellfish industry could lose more than $400 million annually by 2100 due to impacts of ocean acidification.

Trash in the ocean

The majority of the garbage that enters the ocean each year is plastic-and here to stay. That's because unlike other trash, the single-use plastic bags, water bottles, drinking straws, and yogurt containers, totalling some eight million metric tons of the plastic waste we toss (instead of recycling), won't biodegrade. Instead, they can persist in the environment for a millennium, polluting our beaches, entangling marine life, and getting ingested by fish, whales, turtles, and seabirds.

The most infamous example of marine debris is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But these patches (which are more like " soups") represent only a fraction of the trash in our oceans. In fact, plastic debris has been found at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench.

Where does all this debris originate? While some is dumped directly into the seas, 80 percent of marine litter makes its way there gradually from land-based sources―including those far inland―via storm drains, sewers, and other routes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Oil from boats, airplanes, cars, trucks, and even lawn mowers is contributing to water pollution circulating in ocean waters. (An excellent reason for why we should all reduce plastic pollution, no matter where we live.) Chemical discharges from factories, raw sewage overflow from water treatment systems, and stormwater and agricultural runoff add other forms of marine-poisoning pollutants to the toxic brew, contributing to algal blooms and aquatic dead zones.

Ocean noise

The ocean is far from being a " silent world." 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.

Consider the incessant din of the roughly 60,000 commercial tanker and container ships that ply the seas at any given time. The underwater racket that results creates a kind of "smog" that reaches nearly every corner of the ocean and shrinks the sensory range of marine wildlife. High-intensity sonar used by the U.S. Navy for testing and training causes some of the same effects-and has been linked to mass whale strandings.

Meanwhile, in the hunt for offshore oil and gas, ships equipped with high-powered airguns fire compressed air into the water every 10 to 12 seconds for weeks to months on end. Traveling as far as 2,500 miles, these deafening seismic blasts disrupt foraging, mating, and other vital behaviors of endangered whales (and may ultimately push some, such as the North Atlantic right whale, to extinction). The blasts lead some commercial fish species to abandon their habitat-a direct hit on coastal economies dependent on catch rates; they also injure and kill marine invertebrates, including scallops, crabs, and squid.

Offshore drilling

In addition to noise pollution, the oil and gas industry's routine operations emit toxic by-products, release high levels of greenhouse gases, 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. Take the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound, from which oil still remains, or the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling disaster, which spread millions of gallons of oil throughout the Gulf of Mexico, imposing a heavy toll on coastal communities. But smaller spills also pollute the ocean (and the air) with long-lasting impacts. Even the most advanced cleanup efforts remove only a fraction of the oil, and sometimes they use hazardous technologies. Chemical dispersants used in the largest spill response efforts-1.8 million gallons were released into the Gulf after the BP disaster-are dangerous pollutants themselves.

NRDC works to defend our oceans

From the earliest days of NRDC's founding, we've advocated-and litigated-to protect the world's oceans. As political tides changed in Congress and the White House, NRDC has been steadfast in our defense of policies that protect marine species, as well as coastal communities and their ocean-based economies. In addition to advocating for climate policies that will ensure the health of marine ecosystems, NRDC has played a key role in halting offshore drilling and seismic blasting in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, in the creation of the Atlantic's first marine national monument, and in the push for more sustainable, ethical seafood. Today, we're part of a growing coalition calling for governments to fully and highly protect at least 30 percent of our oceans by 2030 (part of what's known as " 30x30 ") to help safeguard the marine ecosystems and fisheries that provide food, jobs, and cultural sustenance to billions around the world.

Ocean pollution and you

The fate of our seas is not only up to the government or industry. Our individual, daily actions matter too. You can start by reducing water pollution and runoff at home, being more mindful of your plastic consumption, or organizing a cleanup of your local waterway. You can also support the work of NRDC and other environmental advocacy groups as well as businesses and organizations that work to preserve our coasts and waters.
This story was originally published on January 22, 2018, and has been updated with new information and links.

This NRDC.org story is available for online republication by news media outlets or nonprofits under these conditions: The writer(s) must be credited with a byline; you must note prominently that the story was originally published by NRDC.org and link to the original; the story cannot be edited (beyond simple things such as grammar); you can't resell the story in any form or grant republishing rights to other outlets; you can't republish our material wholesale or automatically-you need to select stories individually; you can't republish the photos or graphics on our site without specific permission; you should to let us know when you've used one of our stories.

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Ocean pollution in the form of fossil fuels, trash, offshore drilling, and noise is harming marine life. Learn what you can do to reduce harm to our oceans.

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 Ocean Pollution fact that will blow you mind

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 Ocean Pollution fact that will blow you mind

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Ocean pollution affects more than 817 animal species around the world, a figure that has increased 23% in the last 5 years alone. Plastic is one of the most common causes of ocean pollution, but it’s not the only thing harming our seas. There are several tangible steps you can take to help reduce ocean pollution today. Read on for more ocean pollution facts.

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6.5 million tons of litter enter the world's Ocean each year.

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Together we can act for the future of the Blue Planet

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How Ocean Pollution Impacts Marine Life—and All of Us

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How Ocean Pollution Impacts Marine Life—and All of Us

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Ocean pollution comes in many forms, but the largest factor affecting the oceans is plastic. ... Plastic kills fish, birds, marine mammals and sea turtles, destroys habitats and even affects animals' mating rituals, which can have devastating consequences and can wipe out entire species.

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Source: Torben Lonne /

The world's oceans are a magical, diverse and abundant ecosystem that mankind needs in order to survive.

The oceans cover over 72 percent of the planet's surface, provide over 97 percent of the world's water supply and over 70 percent of the oxygen we breathe.

We have so much to thank the oceans for; however, they are threatened daily by natural and manmade pollution. Ocean pollution comes in many forms, but the largest factor affecting the oceans is plastic.

Over the last decade, we have produced more plastic than we have in the last 100 years. This sharp increase in plastic entering our waters harms not only marine life but also humanity.

Plastic kills fish, birds, marine mammals and sea turtles, destroys habitats and even affects animals' mating rituals, which can have devastating consequences and can wipe out entire species.

Learn more about ocean pollution and how it affects marine life and humanity with the infographic below.

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How Ocean Pollution Impacts Marine Life-and All of Us - MarineSafe

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Source: Torben Lonne / AlterNet The world's oceans are a magical, diverse and abundant ecosystem that mankind needs in order to survive. The oceans cover over 72 percent of the planet's surface, provide over 97 percent of the world's water supply and over 70 percent of the oxygen we breathe.

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The plastic Pollution  Facts and Figures.

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The plastic Pollution  Facts and Figures.

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Recent studies have revealed marine plastic pollution in 100% of marine turtles, 59% of whales, 36% of seals and 40% of seabird species examined.

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With so much seafood now containing plastic, the question is no longer are we eating plastic, but how bad is it for our health? In seawater, plastic absorbs chemicals like PCBs and DDTs which have been linked to endocrine disruption and even some cancers, becoming more powerful as they work their way up the food chain. Microplastics have now been found in human blood and disturbingly known to pass from mothers to their unborn children through the placentae.

The beach is where we go to connect with nature. It's simply not the same if it's covered in plastic. And with coastal tourism worth £5.5 billion to the UK economy, many of us count on it being clean for our livelihoods.

Even if you don't eat fish or go to the beach, everybody breathes. And all that essential oxygen? Marine plants produce a massive 70% of it.

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Immerse yourself in plastic trash and its shocking impact on our blue planet to better understand the big issues at play.

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Millions of animals are killed by plastics every year, from birds to fish to other marine organisms. Nearly 700 species, including endangered ones, are known to have been affected by plastics. Nearly every species of seabird eats plastics. Most of the deaths to animals are caused by entanglement or starvation. Seals, whales, turtles, and other animals are strangled by abandoned fishing gear or discarded six-pack rings. Microplastics have been found in more than 100 aquatic species, including fish, shrimp, and mussels destined for our dinner plates. In many cases, these tiny bits pass through the digestive system and are expelled without consequence. But plastics have also been found to have blocked digestive tracts or pierced organs, causing death. Stomachs so packed with plastics reduce the urge to eat, causing starvation.

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Much of the planet is swimming in discarded plastic, which is harming animal and possibly human health. Can it be cleaned up?

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More than 220 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year.

Recent research has suggested that the amount of discarded plastics will outweigh the amount of fish in our oceans by 2050.

60 -90% of marine pollution is made up of different types of plastic.

In 2006, the UN Environment Programme estimated that every square mile of ocean contained 46,000 pieces of floating plastic.

A plastic bottle can last up to 450 years in the marine environment.

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Home >Marine pollution

Marine pollution

One of the biggest threats to our oceans is man-made pollution. Discarded plastics and other residential waste, discharge from pesticides and industrial chemicals eventually find their way into the sea with devastating consequences for marine life and the habitats they depend on. Shipping accidents and oil spills add additional toxins to the mix.

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World Ocean Day 2019: Ocean plastics problem isn't going away, but here's what you can do to help

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World Ocean Day 2019: Ocean plastics problem isn't going away, but here's what you can do to help

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There's so much plastic in the environment at this point, it's in the water we drink, much of the food we eat and even the air we breathe," Hocevar said.

Every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean, according to a 2016 study published by the World Economic Forum. This equates to a garbage truck full of plastic being dumped into the ocean every minute, and if the trend is not upended, that number could increase to four dump trucks of plastic entering the ocean every minute, the study predicted.

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The consequences from the mass production, consumption and discarding of plastics continue to get worse and worse, and the health of the environment -- especially the world's oceans -- is deteriorating because of it.

The problem with plastics is relatively new but serious, John Hocevar, marine biologist and oceans campaign director for Greenpeace USA, told ABC News. The mass production of plastic emerged in the 1950s and has continued to expand exponentially ever since, and almost all of the plastic that has ever been made "is still with us here today," Hocevar said. The materials never completely disintegrate, but rather break down into microplastics, particles less than 5 millimeters in diameter, that continue to be distributed throughout the earth.

More than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic has been produced globally in the last 70 years, Dianna Cohen, CEO of the Plastic Pollution Coalition, told ABC News.

"There's so much plastic in the environment at this point, it's in the water we drink, much of the food we eat and even the air we breathe," Hocevar said.

Every year, 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the ocean, according to a 2016 study published by the World Economic Forum. This equates to a garbage truck full of plastic being dumped into the ocean every minute, and if the trend is not upended, that number could increase to four dump trucks of plastic entering the ocean every minute, the study predicted.

Majority of plastic flows into ocean through rivers

Most plastic is not dumped intentionally into the ocean, Hocevar said. Because plastic is light and there is so much of it, it ends up being washed down drains by rainwater or blown by wind into bodies of water that flow into rivers and ultimately the ocean, Hocevar said. Much of the plastic in landfills doesn't stay there because it's lightweight and gets scooped up by the elements, he added.

It has been discovered that the majority of the plastic ends up in the ocean through rivers, especially seven rivers in Asia, Bonnie Monteleone, oceans plastic researcher at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and executive director of the Plastic Ocean Project, told ABC News.

"Unfortunately, the message to the rest of the world is Asia is the one that's causing the problem," she said.

However, plastic will essentially find its way to the ocean no matter where someone lives, according to the experts.

"So even if you live on a mountain, if there's debris on the ground, there's a high probability that if it's not picked up by wind, rain water is gonna wash it down storm drains," Monteleone said.

Where Hocevar lives in Washington, D.C., plastic packaging can wash down into sewer drains that flow into the Anacostia River, he said. From there, the plastic then flows into the Potomac River, into the Chesapeake Bay and then into the Atlantic Ocean, he said.

"That's a pretty typical path for plastic trash for many coastal areas," Hocevar said.

It is extremely difficult to clear plastic from open ocean water

There are currently 5 trillion pieces of plastic waste in the world's oceans, according to The Ocean Cleanup, a project dedicated to ridding the ocean of waste.

The reason why it is so difficult to clean the existing plastic from the ocean is because of the sheer amount of trash that currently exists, Hocevar said. There is no approach yet designed that can filter plastic out of that volume of water, especially microplastics, Hocevar said.

To make matters more challenging, not all plastic is floating on the surface of the water. Plastic has been found in the furthest reaches of the ocean, from the deepest waters of the Mariana Trench, to the Arctic and Antarctic, Hocevar said.

"We have found plastic everywhere we've looked," Hocevar said.

Research conducted on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the massive floating island of plastic between California and Hawaii, has found numbers of microplastics seven times as high as what scientists have found off big cities like Los Angeles, Miami and New York, Hocevar said.

Some successful cleanup efforts have focused on river mouths to try and capture as much plastic as possible before it flows out into the open ocean, Hocevar said.

This allows the cleanup to occur before the trash hits the most concentrated point of marine life, which is along shallow waters on coastal shelves, Mallos said.

Marine life affected by plastic as well

More than 800 species of marine animals are affected by plastics, and the entire marine ecosystem is now contaminated, Nick Mallos, the director of the Ocean Conservancy's Trash Free Seas program, told ABC News.

Plastic has been a "huge" problem for sea turtles and whales, which are washing up dead with stomachs and throats clogged with plastic, Hocevar said.

Most baby sea turtles are ingesting plastic, and most seabirds are eating plastic and feeding plastic to their chicks, Hocevar said. Fish of all sizes are also eating plastic, which accumulates up the food chain to humans, he added.

The animals often die " slow, painful deaths," often of starvation, because their stomachs are full of plastic that never digests.

The marine life is getting trapped in plastic debris as well, Monteleone said.

Experts focusing on prevention to keep problem from getting worse

The best solution to keeping plastic from ending up in the ocean is to not make so much of it, Hocevar said, adding that the "game changer" will be when politicians and corporate executives work together with environmental advocates to enact policies for a healthier planet.

"The good news is that everyone understands that we have a problem and that we can't keep on going the way we have been," Hocevar said. "It makes sense to people that we can't keep making things we use once and throw away out of materials that basically last forever."

However, that will require a complete shift in both industry and individual practices, according to the experts.

Mallos emphasized that corporations will need to "radically" redesign plastic packaging and products, and that the infrastructure for collecting and processing recyclable plastics will need to drastically improve.

This will involve governments enacting legislation on plastics, similar to the ban states like California, Hawaii and New York have placed on plastic bags, Mallos said.

"So, we may not be able to remove all the plastic that we've already put into the environment, but we can keep this from getting much worse," Hocevar said.

How individuals can help stop plastic from entering ocean

Rethinking the way you use, reuse and discard plastic will make a seismic difference in the amount of plastic that ends up in the oceans, according to the experts.

This will involve people saying no to plastic bags and plastic straws, as well as increasingly utilizing reusable and refillable items instead of single-use throwaway packaging, Hocevar said.

"The ultimate way is to reduce our use of single-use plastic," Monteleone said.

Mallos recommended small changes such as carrying a water bottle at all times, bringing a reusable bag to the grocery store and skipping straws.

No matter how insignificant it seems, the world could see "very real impacts for the health of the ocean and the broader health of planet," Mallos said.

Monteleone described an initiative in which the Plastic Ocean Project encouraged local restaurants to only hand out straws on request. The restaurants that participated found they would use the same amount of boxes in a month that they otherwise would have used in a day, and in turn, they saved money, she said.

"The straw is low-hanging fruit," she said, adding that it's one of the "easiest" items to shift from.

Opting out of receiving plastic utensils when ordering takeout to your home is another small effort that makes a big difference over time, she said.

In addition, beach cleanups are more effective than people may think, Monteleone said. Often, people will question why they should volunteer to clean a beach when trash will inevitably end up there again, but it's one of the best ways to reduce the amount of waste going into the ocean, she said.

"What we really need to do is to prevent more trash from entering our oceans," said Nancy Wallace, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Program. "That's something we all can really make a difference on."

And if participating in an organized beach cleanup isn't possible, Mallos recommended even just taking a bag while walking the dog and picking up whatever you find.

"Every piece maters, and every piece makes a difference," he said.

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World Ocean Day 2019: Ocean plastics problem isn't going away, but here's what you can do to help

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The consequences from the mass production, consumption and discarding of plastics continue to get worse and worse, and the health of the environment -- especially the world's oceans -- is deteriorating because of it. The problem with plastics is relatively new but serious, John Hocevar, marine biologist and oceans campaign director for Greenpeace USA, told ABC News.

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Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

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Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

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Most of the plastic bottles washing up on the rocky shores of Inaccessible Island, aptly named for its sheer cliffs rising from the middle of the South Atlantic, probably come from Chinese merchant ships, a study published Monday said.

The study offers fresh evidence that the vast garbage patches floating in the middle of oceans, which have sparked much consumer hand-wringing in recent years, are less the product of people dumping single-use plastics in waterways or on land, than they are the result of merchant marine vessels tossing their waste overboard by the ton.

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September 30, 2019 by Ivan Couronne

A plastic bottle on Henderson Island in the Pacific, June 13 2019

Most of the plastic bottles washing up on the rocky shores of Inaccessible Island, aptly named for its sheer cliffs rising from the middle of the South Atlantic, probably come from Chinese merchant ships, a study published Monday said.

The study offers fresh evidence that the vast garbage patches floating in the middle of oceans, which have sparked much consumer hand-wringing in recent years, are less the product of people dumping single-use plastics in waterways or on land, than they are the result of merchant marine vessels tossing their waste overboard by the ton.

The authors of the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, collected thousands of pieces of waste during visits to the tiny island in 1984, 2009 and again in 2018.

The island is located roughly midway between Argentina and South Africa in the South Atlantic gyre, a vast whirlpool of currents that has created what has come to be known as an oceanic garbage patch.

While initial inspections of the trash washing up on the island showed labels indicating it had come from South America, some 2,000 miles (3,000 kilometers) to the west, by 2018 three-quarters of the garbage appeared to originate from Asia, mostly China.

Many of the plastic bottles had been crushed with their tops screwed on tight, as is customary on board ships to save space, said report author Peter Ryan, director of the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Around 90 percent of the bottles found had been produced in the previous two years, ruling out the possibility that they had been carried by ocean currents over the vast distance from Asia, which would normally take three to five years.

Since the number of Asian fishing vessels has remained stable since the 1990s, while the number of Asian-and in particular, Chinese-cargo vessels has vastly increased in the Atlantic, the researchers concluded that the bottles must come from merchant vessels, which toss them overboard rather than dumping them as trash at ports.

"It's inescapable that it's from ships, and it's not coming from land," Ryan told AFP.

"A certain sector of the merchant fleet seems to be doing that, and it seems to be largely an Asian one," he said.

A man cleans up the beach on Henderson Island in the Pacific in June 2019

Fishing nets
There are two distinct types of marine pollution.

On the one hand, there are the beaches around urban centers: the plastics that are found there come from coastal areas, and include bottles, bags and packaging. But these things sink easily and are less likely to be carried far by currents.

Farther out in the oceans, the garbage patches contain fragments of objects of unclear origin, as well as items used by cargo ships and fishing fleets: not just the bottles emptied by the ships' crews, but also nets, ropes, buoys, crates, barrels and floats.

"It's an underappreciated cause of pollution," said Ryan.

Half of the great Pacific garbage patch is made up of fishing nets, by weight, according to a report published last year in Scientific Reports.

Oceanographer Laurent Lebreton, one of the authors of the latter report, said that the oft-quoted figure of 80 percent of plastic pollution coming from the land does not apply to the high seas.

He recalled having found huge clusters of nets created by fishing vessels in the North Pacific, known as "fish aggregating devices" to attract fish.

"Often they don't retrieve them and they are lost. We have found several tons of them," said Lebreton, of the organization The Ocean Cleanup.

"Everyone talks about saving the oceans by stopping using plastic bags, straws and single use packaging. That's important, but when we head out on the ocean, that's not necessarily what we find," he told AFP.

More information: Peter G. Ryan el al., "Rapid increase in Asian bottles in the South Atlantic Ocean indicates major debris inputs from ships," PNAS (2019). www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1909816116

Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Scientific Reports

© 2019 AFP

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Ocean plastic waste probably comes from ships, report says

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September 30, 2019 by Ivan Couronne Most of the plastic bottles washing up on the rocky shores of Inaccessible Island, aptly named for its sheer cliffs rising from the middle of the South Atlantic, probably come from Chinese merchant ships, a study published Monday said.

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Plastic is the most common element that is found in the ocean. It is harmful for the environment as it does not get break down easily and is often considered as food by marine animals.

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The ocean remains one of the most expansive, mysterious and diverse places on Earth. Unfortunately, it is being threatened by pollution from people on land and natural causes. Marine life is dying, and as a result, the whole oceanic ecosystem is threatened simply by various sources of pollution. If we are to preserve the ocean and its natural beauty, drastic measures have to be taken to combat this pollution and keep what we hold most dear.

Before, it was assumed that because the ocean was so big, 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 five oceans have suffered as a result of human consequence for over 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.

Wikipedia defines ocean pollution as,

" Marine pollution occurs when harmful, or potentially harmful, effects result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Most sources of marine pollution are land-based. The pollution often comes from nonpoint sources such as agricultural runoff, wind-blown debris and dust."

Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans.

~ Jacques Cousteau

"Did you know that approximately 1.4 billion pounds of trash per year enter the ocean?" Source: NOAA

35 Surprising Facts About Ocean Pollution

Simply put, the ocean cannot continue to thrive as a dumpsite for people. While the state of the ocean's pollution may not come as any sort of surprise to many people, the following cold hard facts might:

Fact 1: Plastic is the most common element that is found in the ocean. It is harmful to the environment as it does not get break down easily and is often mistaken as food by marine animals.

Fact 2: At least 8 million tons of plastic enter the oceans each year. That's similar to emptying a garbage truck of plastic into an ocean every minute.

Fact 3: Plastic pollution is one of the most serious threats to the ocean. Plastic does not degrade; instead, it breaks down into progressively smaller pieces, known as microplastic (smaller than 5 mm) by sun exposure and wave action. Then it can find its way into the food chain but never disappears.

Plastic debris can absorb toxic chemicals from ocean pollution, therefore poisoning whatever eats it. It poses a significant health threat to the various sea creatures and the entire marine ecosystem.

Fact 4: There is more microplastic in the ocean than there are stars in the Milky Way.

Fact 5: Over 100,000 marine animals die every year from plastic entanglement and ingestion. More than 50 percent of sea turtles have consumed plastic.

Fact 6: There's so much junk at sea that the debris has formed giant garbage patches. The term "garbage patch" is a large area actually made up of debris ranging in size, from microplastics to large bundles of derelict fishing gear and other marine debris collects.

These patches are formed by large, rotating ocean currents called gyres that pull debris into one location, often to the gyre's center. The debris forming garbage patches can be found from the surface of the ocean all the way to the ocean floor.

Fact 7: There are five gyres in the ocean, one in the Indian Ocean, two in the Atlantic Ocean, and two in the Pacific Ocean. The largest is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Fact 8: There is an island of garbage twice the size of Texas inside the Pacific Ocean: the North Pacific Gyre off the coast of California includes an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of trash. There, the number of floating plastic pieces outnumbers total marine life by six to one in the immediate vicinity.

Fact 9: In fact, plastic is the number one source of pollution in the ocean. When plastic eventually degrades, which is around 400 years for most plastic, the process releases chemicals that further contaminate the sea.

Fact 10: Plastic in the ocean comes from China and Indonesia more than anywhere else, and they account for one-third of plastic pollution. In fact, 80% of plastic pollution comes from just 20 countries, including the United States.

Fact 11: The biggest source of pollution in the ocean is directly from land-based sources, such as oil, dirt, septic tanks, farms, ranches, motor vehicles, among larger sources. Thousands of tons of waste and trash are dumped into the ocean on a daily basis.

Fact 12: Over one million seabirds are killed by ocean pollution each year. Three hundred thousand dolphins and porpoises die each year as a result of becoming entangled in discarded fishing nets, among other items. One hundred thousand sea mammals are killed in the ocean by pollution each year.

Fact 13: Even though mostly the trash and waste dumped into the ocean is released hundreds of miles away from land, it still washes up on beaches and coastal areas, and affects everything in between. Every marine animal is affected by man-made chemicals released in the water.

Fact 14: Oil is the fastest source of deterioration to the ocean, being far more harmful than trash and waste. However, only a small percentage of oil (around 12%) dumped in the ocean comes as a result of actual oil spills. Most oil causing harm in the ocean is a result of drainage from the land.

Fact 15: Oil spills suffocate marine life to death, and leads to behavioral changes and a breakdown in thermal insulation to those that do survive. It essentially changes the entire ecosystem of an affected area, such as a long coastline or deep ocean.

Fact 16: Toxic metals can destroy biochemistry, behavior, reproduction, and growth in marine life.

Fact 17: Microfibers also cause much pollution. With each load of laundry, more than 700,000 synthetic microfibers are washed into our waterways. Unlike natural materials such as cotton or wool, these synthetic microfibers make up as much as 85 percent of all beach trash that do not break down.

Fact 18: Not all sources of contamination in the ocean come from just oil, trash and solid wastes. The dumping of radioactive waste from nuclear reactors, industrial race (such as heavy metals and acids), and drained sewage are also heavy contributors to pollution.

Fact 19: Littering causes pollution in the ocean, which also causes a substantial loss of life beneath the seas. The truth is that billions of tons of litter end up in the ocean each year, and it is substantially more than the 250 million tons of trash generated. This has led to a gradual loss in marine life and an increase in the number of endangered species.

Fact 20: There is also much noise in the ocean. Noise pollution created by shipping and military activity can cause cellular damage to a class of invertebrates that includes jellyfish and anemones. These animals are a major food source for tuna, sharks, sea turtles and other creatures.

Fact 21: Sewage leads to the decomposition of organic matter that, in turn, leads to a change in biodiversity. Even if the ocean's ecosystem isn't destroyed entirely, it is still changed drastically, and often not for the better.

Fact 22: Fertilizer runoff creates eutrophication that flourishes algal bloom in aquatic systems. Harmful algal blooms (HABs), also known as " red tides," grow rapidly and produce toxic effects that can affect marine life and sometimes even humans, which depletes the oxygen content in the water that affects marine life.

Fact 23: In several parts of the world, including the Gulf of Mexico and the Baltic Sea, Eutrophication has created enormous dead zones that can result in mass die-offs of fish and other marine life, making those zones impossible for marine or plant life.

Fact 24: The dead zones are growing in number. In 2004, scientists counted 146 hypoxia or dead zones, areas of such low oxygen concentration that animal life suffocates and dies, in the world's oceans. By 2008, that number increased to 405. In 2017, in the Gulf of Mexico, oceanographers detected the largest dead zone ever measured, nearly the size of New Jersey.

Fact 25: Small animals at the bottom of the food chain absorb the chemicals as part of their food. These small animals are then eaten by larger animals that again increase the concentration of chemicals. Animals at the top of the hierarchy of the food chain have contamination levels millions of times higher than the water in which they live.

Fact 26: People get contaminated easily by eating contaminated seafood that can cause serious health problems, from cancer to damage to the immune system.

Fact 27: The ocean pollution is more common in waters more than 2,000 feet deep, with the most common plastic bags, metal cans, fishing equipment, glass bottles, shoes, tires, etc.

Fact 28: The garbage like plastic bottles, aluminum cans, shoes, packaging material - if not disposed of correctly, can reach the sea, and the same garbage can again reach the seashore where it pollutes beaches and affects the local tourism industry.

Fact 29: Salty water of the ocean has the capability to move pollutants from the ocean to coastal freshwater, making wells and groundwater contaminated.

Fact 30: Chemicals from industries and mines can also enter the ocean through land-based activities. They can seep through soil, water or land either during their manufacture, use or accidental leaks. From soil, water or land, they can enter into ocean currents and can travel longer distances.

Fact 31: As 70% of the earth is covered with water, people actually assumed that all pollutants would be diluted and get disappeared. But in reality, they have not disappeared, and their effects can be easily seen as they have entered the food chain.

Fact 32: Until the 1970s, the chemicals and garbage were deliberately dumped into the oceans and became common practice for disposing of everything, including pesticides and radioactive waste, assuming that it would get dissolved to safe levels.

Fact 33: Till today, in many parts of the world, sewage water is discharged in the ocean - untreated or under-treated. This can have a serious effect on marine and human life and can also lead to eutrophication.

Fact 34: We cannot see ocean pollution because most ocean trash sits on the bottom, and it may be worse. Almost 70 percent of ocean garbage actually sinks to the seafloor for which we're unlikely ever to be able to clean it up.

Fact 35: One effect of greenhouse emissions is increased ocean acidification, which makes the oceans lose mussel mass. It is becoming more difficult for bivalves such as mussels, clams and oysters to form shells, decreasing their likelihood of survival, upsetting the food chain and affecting the shellfish industry of multibillion-dollar.
References: National Geographic

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35 Surprising Facts About Ocean Pollution That Might Scare You - Conserve Energy Future

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The ocean remains one of the most expansive, mysterious and diverse places on Earth. Unfortunately, it is being threatened by pollution from people on land and natural causes. Marine life is dying, and as a result, the whole oceanic ecosystem is threatened simply by various sources of pollution.

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Ocean Pollution-11 facts you need to know

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Ocean Pollution-11 facts you need to know

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Eight million metric tons: That’s how much plastic we dump into the oceans each year. That’s about 17.6 billion pounds — or the equivalent of nearly 57,000 blue whales — every single year. By 2050, ocean plastic will outweigh all of the ocean’s fish.

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Ocean pollution: 11 facts you need to know

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With each passing year, we expose the ocean to more pollutants, from trash to chemicals. Fortunately, it’s not too late to clean up our act.

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Ocean Pollution-11 facts you need to know

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Ocean Pollution-11 facts you need to know

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Conservation International has spearheaded the creation of millions of square miles of marine protected areas — internationally recognized areas of the sea in which human activities, including fishing and shipping, are sustainably managed. We've also pioneered the Seascapes approach, partnering with local decision-makers to sustainably manage large, multiple-use ocean areas.

Since 2004, we've worked with partners in eight countries to conserve marine life in four key areas: the Abrolhos Seascape in Brazil; the Bird’s Head Seascape in Indonesia; the Eastern Tropical Pacific Seascape in Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador; and the Sulu-Sulawesi Seascape in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia.

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Ocean pollution: 11 facts you need to know

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With each passing year, we expose the ocean to more pollutants, from trash to chemicals. Fortunately, it’s not too late to clean up our act.

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30 Ocean Pollution Facts That Blow Your Mind.

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30 Ocean Pollution Facts That Blow Your Mind.

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Ocean pollution affects more than 817 animal species around the world, a figure that has increased 23% in the last 5 years alone. Plastic is one of the most common causes of ocean pollution, but it’s not the only thing harming our seas. There are several tangible steps you can take to help reduce ocean pollution today. Read on for more ocean pollution facts.

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THE OCEANS ARE so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible.

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THE OCEANS ARE so vast and deep that until fairly recently, it was widely assumed that no matter how much trash and chemicals humans dumped into them, the effects would be negligible.

Today, we need look no further than the New Jersey-size dead zone that forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, or the thousand-mile-wide belt of plastic trash in the northern Pacific Ocean to see that this early "policy" placed a once flourishing ocean ecosystem on the brink of collapse.

Many "flavors" of marine pollution

Ocean water covers more than 70 percent of the Earth, and only in recent decades have we begun to understand how humans impact this watery habitat. Marine pollution, as distinct from overall water pollution, focuses on human-created products that enter the ocean.

Before 1972, humans around the word spewed trash, sewage sludge, and chemical, industrial, and radioactive wastes into the ocean with impunity. Millions of tons of heavy metals and chemical contaminants, along with thousands of containers of radioactive waste, were purposely thrown into the ocean.

The London Convention, ratified in 1975 by the United States, was the first international agreement to spell out better protection for the marine environment. The agreement implemented regulatory programs and prohibited the disposal of hazardous materials at sea. An updated agreement, the London Protocol, went into effect in 2006, more specifically banning all wastes and materials except for a short list of items, like leftover materials from dredging.

Many of these pollutants sink to the ocean's depths or float far distances from their original source, where they are consumed by small marine organisms and introduced into the global food chain. Marine pollution encompasses many types of pollution that disrupt the marine ecosystem, including chemical, light, noise, and plastic pollution.

Chemical pollution

Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage.

Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines. Nutrient-packed fertilizers applied to farmland, for example, often end up in local streams and are eventually deposited into estuaries and bays. These excess nutrients trigger massive blooms of algae that rob the water of oxygen, leaving dead zones where few marine organisms can live. Some chemical pollutants climb high into the food webs-like DDT, the insecticide that placed the bald eagle on the United States Fish and Wildlife's endangered species list.

Scientists are starting to better understand how specific pollutants, leached into the ocean from other materials, affect marine wildlife. PFAS, a chemical incorporated into many household products, accumulates in human and marine mammal blood. Even pharmaceuticals ingested by humans, but not fully processed by our bodies, end up in aquatic food webs.

Light pollution

Since the invention of the lightbulb, light has spread across the globe, reaching almost every ecosystem. Often thought of as a terrestrial problem, scientists are starting to understand how artificial light at night affects many marine organisms.

Light pollution penetrates under the water, creating a vastly different world for fish living in shallow reefs near urban environments. Light disrupts the normal cues associated with circadian rhythms, to which species have evolved timing of migration, reproducing, and feeding. Artificial light at night can make it easier for predators to find smaller fish prey and can affect breeding in reef fish.

Noise pollution

Pollution is not always visible. In large bodies of water, sound waves can carry undiminished for miles. The increased presence of loud or persistent sounds from ships, sonar devices, and oil rigs disrupts natural noises in the marine environment.

For many marine mammals, like whales and dolphins, low visibility and large distances make non-visual underwater communication critical. Toothed whales use echolocation-emitting sounds that reflect off surfaces-to help them "see" in the ocean. Unnatural noises interrupt communication, disrupting migration, communication, hunting, and reproduction patterns for many marine animals.

Plastic pollution

Plastic pollution seeps into the ocean through run-off and even purposeful dumping. The amount of plastic in the Atlantic Ocean has tripled since the 1960s. The garbage patch floating in the Pacific Ocean, almost 620,000 square miles- twice the size of Texas -is a powerful image of our plastic problem.

A huge culprit is single-use plastics, used once before tossed into the trash or directly into the ocean. These single-use items are accidentally consumed by many marine mammals. Plastic bags resemble jellyfish, a common food for sea turtles, while some seabirds eat plastic because it releases a chemical that makes it smell like its natural food. Discarded fishing nets drift for years, ensnaring fish and mammals.

Bits of plastic swirl throughout the water column, even sinking to the deepest depths of the ocean. Scientists found plastic fibers in corals in the Atlantic Ocean-and more concerning, they found that the corals readily ate plastic over food. Dying marine mammals, washing up on shore, also contain plastic inside their stomachs.

Is there a "fix" to marine pollution?

Many national laws, as well as international agreements, now forbid dumping of harmful materials into the ocean, although enforcing these regulations remains a challenge.

Many pollutants still persist in the environment, difficult to fully remove. Chemical pollutants often cannot be broken down for long periods of time, or they increase in concentration as they move up the food web. Because plastic is thought to take hundreds of years to break down, it poses a threat to the marine environment for centuries.

Isolated efforts to restore estuaries and bays have met with some success, but pollution gets trapped in marine sediment and makes complete clean-ups nearly impossible.

Moving forward, encouraging recycling and reuse can minimize plastic pollution. Dampening unnecessary lights at night can limit light pollution. And encouraging responsible chemical-use through consumer and political actions can protect the environment for the future.

National Geographic is committed to reducing plastics pollution. Learn more about our non-profit activities at natgeo.org/plastics. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.

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A wide range of pollution-from plastic pollution to light pollution-affects marine ecosystems.

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Covering more than 70 percent of our planet, oceans are among the earth’s most valuable natural resources. They govern the weather, clean the air, help feed the world, and provide a living for millions. They also are home to most of the life on earth, from microscopic algae to the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. Yet we’re bombarding them with pollution. By their very nature—with all streams flowing to rivers, all rivers leading to the sea—the oceans are the end point for so much of the pollution we produce on land, however far from the coasts we may be. And from dangerous carbon emissions to choking plastic to leaking oil to constant noise, the types of ocean pollution humans generate are vast. As a result, collectively, our impact on the seas is degrading their health at an alarming rate. Here are some ocean pollution facts that everyone on our blue planet ought to know.

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Covering more than 70 percent of our planet, oceans are among the earth's most valuable natural resources. They govern the weather, clean the air, help feed the world, and provide a living for millions. They also are home to most of the life on earth, from microscopic algae to the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet. Yet we're bombarding them with pollution. By their very nature-with all streams flowing to rivers, and all rivers leading to the sea-the oceans are the end point for so much of the pollution we produce on land, however far from the coasts we may be. And from dangerous carbon emissions and choking plastic to leaking oil and constant noise, the types of ocean pollution that humans generate are vast. As a result, collectively, our impact on the seas is degrading their health at an alarming rate. Here are some ocean pollution facts that everyone on our blue planet ought to know.

Ocean acidification

When we burn fossil fuels, we don't pollute just the air but the oceans too. Indeed, today's seas absorb as much as a quarter of all man-made carbon emissions, which changes the pH of surface waters and leads to acidification (pH is a measure of how acidic or basic water is). This problem is rapidly worsening-oceans are now acidifying faster than they have in some 300 million years. In absorbing so much of the carbon emissions from the atmosphere, the pH level of the ocean surface has increased an estimated 30 percent since the start of the industrial revolution 200 years ago. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, the surface waters of the ocean could be nearly 150 percent more acidic by the end of the century.

So what happens when the ocean's chemistry is knocked out of whack? Marine ecosystems-and the coastal economies that depend on them-go out of whack too. Take reefs and shellfish, for starters. To build their shells and skeletons, creatures like mussels, clams, coral, and oysters require calcium carbonate (the same compound found in chalk and limestone). But the ocean's carbonate levels go down when acidity levels rise, threatening the survival of these animals. Bivalves are at the bottom of the food chain, so these effects ripple up to many fish, seabirds, and marine mammals. More-acidic waters also contribute to the bleaching of coral reefs and make it harder for some types of fish to sense predators and for others to hunt prey.

Meanwhile, ocean acidification threatens us land dwellers too. The billion-dollar American shellfish industry is the economic backbone of myriad coastal communities, from Louisiana to Maryland to Maine. In the Pacific Northwest, the shellfish that are vulnerable to ocean acidification make up more than 60 percent of the fishery revenue. In total, the U.S. shellfish industry could lose more than $400 million annually by 2100 due to impacts of ocean acidification.

Trash in the ocean

The majority of the garbage that enters the ocean each year is plastic-and here to stay. That's because unlike other trash, the single-use plastic bags, water bottles, drinking straws, and yogurt containers, totalling some eight million metric tons of the plastic waste we toss (instead of recycling), won't biodegrade. Instead, they can persist in the environment for a millennium, polluting our beaches, entangling marine life, and getting ingested by fish, whales, turtles, and seabirds.

The most infamous example of marine debris is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But these patches (which are more like " soups") represent only a fraction of the trash in our oceans. In fact, plastic debris has been found at the bottom of the deepest ocean trench.

Where does all this debris originate? While some is dumped directly into the seas, 80 percent of marine litter makes its way there gradually from land-based sources―including those far inland―via storm drains, sewers, and other routes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Oil from boats, airplanes, cars, trucks, and even lawn mowers is contributing to water pollution circulating in ocean waters. (An excellent reason for why we should all reduce plastic pollution, no matter where we live.) Chemical discharges from factories, raw sewage overflow from water treatment systems, and stormwater and agricultural runoff add other forms of marine-poisoning pollutants to the toxic brew, contributing to algal blooms and aquatic dead zones.

Ocean noise

The ocean is far from being a " silent world." 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.

Consider the incessant din of the roughly 60,000 commercial tanker and container ships that ply the seas at any given time. The underwater racket that results creates a kind of "smog" that reaches nearly every corner of the ocean and shrinks the sensory range of marine wildlife. High-intensity sonar used by the U.S. Navy for testing and training causes some of the same effects-and has been linked to mass whale strandings.

Meanwhile, in the hunt for offshore oil and gas, ships equipped with high-powered airguns fire compressed air into the water every 10 to 12 seconds for weeks to months on end. Traveling as far as 2,500 miles, these deafening seismic blasts disrupt foraging, mating, and other vital behaviors of endangered whales (and may ultimately push some, such as the North Atlantic right whale, to extinction). The blasts lead some commercial fish species to abandon their habitat-a direct hit on coastal economies dependent on catch rates; they also injure and kill marine invertebrates, including scallops, crabs, and squid.

Offshore drilling

In addition to noise pollution, the oil and gas industry's routine operations emit toxic by-products, release high levels of greenhouse gases, 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. Take the 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spill in Alaska's Prince William Sound, from which oil still remains, or the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling disaster, which spread millions of gallons of oil throughout the Gulf of Mexico, imposing a heavy toll on coastal communities. But smaller spills also pollute the ocean (and the air) with long-lasting impacts. Even the most advanced cleanup efforts remove only a fraction of the oil, and sometimes they use hazardous technologies. Chemical dispersants used in the largest spill response efforts-1.8 million gallons were released into the Gulf after the BP disaster-are dangerous pollutants themselves.

NRDC works to defend our oceans

From the earliest days of NRDC's founding, we've advocated-and litigated-to protect the world's oceans. As political tides changed in Congress and the White House, NRDC has been steadfast in our defense of policies that protect marine species, as well as coastal communities and their ocean-based economies. In addition to advocating for climate policies that will ensure the health of marine ecosystems, NRDC has played a key role in halting offshore drilling and seismic blasting in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, in the creation of the Atlantic's first marine national monument, and in the push for more sustainable, ethical seafood. Today, we're part of a growing coalition calling for governments to fully and highly protect at least 30 percent of our oceans by 2030 (part of what's known as " 30x30 ") to help safeguard the marine ecosystems and fisheries that provide food, jobs, and cultural sustenance to billions around the world.

Ocean pollution and you

The fate of our seas is not only up to the government or industry. Our individual, daily actions matter too. You can start by reducing water pollution and runoff at home, being more mindful of your plastic consumption, or organizing a cleanup of your local waterway. You can also support the work of NRDC and other environmental advocacy groups as well as businesses and organizations that work to preserve our coasts and waters.
This story was originally published on January 22, 2018, and has been updated with new information and links.

This NRDC.org story is available for online republication by news media outlets or nonprofits under these conditions: The writer(s) must be credited with a byline; you must note prominently that the story was originally published by NRDC.org and link to the original; the story cannot be edited (beyond simple things such as grammar); you can't resell the story in any form or grant republishing rights to other outlets; you can't republish our material wholesale or automatically-you need to select stories individually; you can't republish the photos or graphics on our site without specific permission; you should to let us know when you've used one of our stories.

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Ocean pollution in the form of fossil fuels, trash, offshore drilling, and noise is harming marine life. Learn what you can do to reduce harm to our oceans.

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Over 80% of marine pollution comes from land-based activities.

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Over 80% of marine pollution comes from land-based activities.

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Over 80% of marine pollution comes from land-based activities.

From plastic bags to pesticides - most of the waste we produce on land eventually reaches the oceans, either through deliberate dumping or from run-off through drains and rivers.

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What is the main cause of ocean pollution?

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What is the main cause of ocean pollution?

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Pollution is defined as the process of introducing harmful or poisonous substances into the natural environment. ... There can be several causes of ocean pollution, but the leading causes include sewage, toxic chemicals from industries, nuclear waste, thermal pollution, plastics, acid rain, and oil spillage.

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Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds.

Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage. Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines.

Marine pollution occurs when harmful effects result from the entry into the ocean of chemicals, particles, industrial, agricultural, and residential waste, noise, or the spread of invasive organisms. Eighty percent of marine pollution comes from... Wikipedia

Children's Books about ocean pollution

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Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds. Chemical pollution is the introduction of harmful contaminants. Common man-made pollutants that reach the ocean include pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, detergents, oil, industrial chemicals, and sewage. Many ocean pollutants are released into the environment far upstream from coastlines.

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Where does this pollution come from? Where does it go?

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Where does this pollution come from? Where does it go?

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Where does this pollution come from? Where does it go? Some of the debris ends up on our beaches, washed in with the waves and tides, some sinks, some is eaten by marine animals that mistake it for food, and some accumulates in ocean gyres. Other forms of pollution that impact the health of the ocean come from a single, known sources, such as oil spills, or from accumulation of many dispersed sources, such as fertilizer from our yards.

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Each year, billions of pounds of trash and other pollutants enter the ocean.

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what misconceptions do people have about the topic that i'd like to clarify 

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what misconceptions do people have about the topic that i'd like to clarify 

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1. plastic goes into a recycle bin gets recycles
2. chasing arrows symbol means a plastic container is recyclable
3. our  choice is limited to recycleing or wasting.

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What I find interesting about the topic.

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What I find interesting about the topic.

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A lot of ocean animals are dying    because of humans.

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1. There are floating islands of plastic in every ocean.

2. Ocean plastic primarily comes from ocean dumping and industry

3. Ocean pollution is just a trash problem.
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what personal experiences have i had that relate to some aspect of the topic 

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what personal experiences have i had that relate to some aspect of the topic 

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we use plastic and glass and recycle when we are done to prevent it to not go into the ocean.

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What I need to learn in order to properly inform others:

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What I need to learn in order to properly inform others:

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How plastic gets into the oceans and how detrimental it is to our world.

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What I would like to learn about ocean pollution is...

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What I would like to learn about ocean pollution is...

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How to help clean up oceans and what to do to prevent pollution getting into oceans.