Summary- According to an article published by The New York Times, "Choking the Oceans With Plastic," by Charles J. Moore, the article exemplifies how "the world is awash in plastic."
- Plastic is everywhere, including our cars, carpets, wrap around food that we, humans, consume everyday, and others. - In a sea, researchers have found plastic of every description, "from toothbrushes to tires to unidentifiable fragments too numerous to count floated past our marine vessel Alguita for hundreds of miles without end." - Plastic is known as the most common pollutants of ocean waters worldwide. - It is "pushed by winds, tides, and currents, plastic particles form with other debris into large swirling glutinous accumulation zones." - There is no individual (including scientist, environmentalist, entrepreneur, national or international government agency) that has found a way of "recycling the plastic trash that covers our land and inevitably blows and washes down to the sea." - Plastic debris entangles and slowly kills millions of sea creatures. - Multiple sea cultures get killed because they "mistake plastics for their natural food, ingesting toxicants that cause liver and stomach abnormalities in fish and birds, often choking them to death." - Some of the reasons as for why this has been occurring include that individuals do not like to recycle. |
Choking the Oceans With PlasticFacts- Great Pacific Garbage Patch is known as "one of five major garbage patches drifting in the oceans north and south of the Equator at the latitude of our great terrestrial deserts."
- Researchers found a gloating island bolstered by dozens of "plastic buoys used in oyster aquaculture that had solid areas you could walk on." - Plastic compromise as much as 40 percent of the planet's ocean surface, roughly 25 percent of the entire earth. - In a 2010 study of the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers, researches found that there are around 2.3 billion pieces of plastic, "from polystyrene foam to tiny fragments and pallets," had flowed from "Southern California's urban centers into its coastal waters" in just three days of sampling. - On of the main bait fish in the ocean, called lantern fish, eats "copious quantities of plastic fragments, threatening their future as a nutritious food source to the tuna, salmon, and other pelagic fish," that multiple individuals consume everyday. This has been adding to the increasing amount of "synthetic chemicals." |
Key Terms- Marine pollution: 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.
- Aquaculture: The rearing of aquatic animals or the cultivation of aquatic plants for food. - Oceanography: The study of the physical and the biological aspects of the ocean. - Polystyrene: A synthetic resin that is a polymer of styrene, used chiefly as lightweight rigid foams and films. - Plastic footprint: A similar metric, only it's used to judge how much plastic your lifestyle will contribute to the worldwide trash pile. |
Opinion
In my opinion, the ocean has been choking with plastic for decades and this catastrophe will keep continuing if humans do not stop it. Plastic has been accumulating in the ocean which has been creating multiple problems such as species being in danger, pollution, extinction, and others. Unfortunately, the main cause of this disaster are humans. In fact, around 80% of plastics in the ocean comes from land-based activities. For that reason, humans must start to take action before is too late. Some ways to reduce plastic in oceans are to reuse bags (ex. shopping bags), to reduce everyday plastics (ex. sandwich bags, juice cartons), to recycle (if a person needs to use plastic, try to choose the most commonly recycled plastics that can be found), to volunteer at beaches cleanup and most importantly, to spread the word (tell everyone the importance to reduce plastic and the impacts of plastic pollution in oceans).
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