Trash Ocean free essay sample

Roughly 75% of our earth is covered with water (IDRC 2010). Many people think that when you dump trash into the ocean that nature will biodegrade. It can take up to hundreds of years for this trash to fully decompose. People need to take into mind that the tiniest piece of plastic can get trapped around animal’s necks, dumping garbage into the ocean can severely damage coral reefs which is home to many marine wildlife , and that red-tides can cause medical complications to animals and people. Our oceans are polluted with many types of trash, but one that really stands out is the amount of plastic that infects our oceans. Plastic  pollution in our ocean  strangles the food chain, and marine wildlife like dolphins, fish, and sea turtles have been found with plastic six-pack rings around their necks. (Figure 1. 1) Microscopic pieces of plastic are drifting like fish food throughout the water, mimicking plankton which is a food supply of most aquatic life (McLaughlin 2008). We will write a custom essay sample on Trash: Ocean or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page A very shocking stat I found was that after a quick calculation that estimated the debris at half a pound for every hundred square meters of sea surface, then multiplied by the circular area defined by our roughly thousand-mile course through the gyre, the weight of the debris was about 3 million tons (Moore 2003). (Figure 1. 2) Unlike most waste trashed into the ocean, most plastics do not biodegrade. Instead they photodegrade, a process where sunlight breaks them into progressively smaller pieces, which are still plastic polymers. In fact, the degradation eventually yields individual molecules of plastic, but these are still too tough for most anythingeven such indiscriminate consumers as bacteriato digest. Next time you throw away a cigarette butt, consider this: Many of the 4. 5 trillion cigarette butts thrown away each year are found in the stomachs of dead fish (Denis 2009). Figure 1. 1 Figure 1. 2 Figure 1. 2 is a disgusting mess. This is seriously harming our ocean and this is a crazy amount of plastic and should not be in the ocean. As you can see, this turtle has plastic attached to its body. It is very difficult for a turtle to get untangled from the plastic strands When I’m at home I don’t like to have garbage everywhere I walk and neither does the marine wildlife. When you throw even the tiniest piece of garbage into the ocean you are throwing it into a marine animal’s house! (Figure 2) Due to pollution of our oceans, the marine life is losing their homes. The coral reefs are slowly disappearing for many reasons and the pollution we dump into the oceans is not helping. Due to rising sea-surface temperatures, increasing  ocean  acidification, pollution  and overfishing, some fear that all 1,000 varieties of coral may be extinct by the end of the century (Wade 2010). Coral is disappearing around the world and this is causing many problems because coral provides shelter for around 25% of marine wildlife (Wade 2010). The reefs also act as a natural, coastal barrier to storm surge from hurricanes and typhoons and without them, natural disasters would cause much greater damage to places they hit. As seen in Figure 2 a plastic bag has been thrown into the water and ended up getting caught in a coral reef. This can harm the reef and even cause it to die Figure 2 There are other types of natural pollution that is very harmful to the ocean. Out of the thousands of species of algae, perhaps only a hundred are toxic. When these species occur, they can color the water and produce what are popularly referred to as red  tides (Solow 2005). Red-tides  are caused primarily by the toxic phytoplankton â€Å"Karenia brevis†, which is found on the west Florida shelf. Scientists say that submarine groundwater provides the missing nutrients and may trigger and maintain  red  tides  off west-central Florida (Weatherwise 2006). This type of phytoplankton has a toxin in it that can kill marine life and cause eye irritations and respiratory complications for humans and animals. Red-tides occur annually in the same area generally between August and March and were blamed for many deaths of species of fish, dolphins and other marine wildlife (Weatherwise 2006). Certain species of phytoplankton contain photosynthetic pigments that vary in color from green to brown to red, and when the algae are present in high concentrations, the water appears to be discoloured or murky, varying in color from white to almost black, normally being red or brown. Figure 3) Figure 3 shows a photograph of a red tide off the coast of La Jolla, California (P. Alejandro Diaz). Figure 3: In conclusion, as stated earlier, most of our planet is made up of water and us as humans are slowly destroying it by dumping are wastes and unwanted items. Don’t throw trash in someone else’s house because you wouldn’t like it very m uch if someone did that in your house. Next time you are on a beach and are done drinking your bottle of pop, don’t leave it on the beach, bring it back with you and dispose it properly.