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Summarizing the major physical properties of the oceans and evaluate how they affect the marine life communities.
There are many different ways we humans impact the ocean but I will be primarily focusing on the Pacific garbage patch. The pacific garbage patch is almost two times the size of Texas. The trash in this patch weighs more than 87,000 tons and consists of 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic. This patch is located in the Eastern Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and California. This is one of the largest patches in the ocean. Our oceans have 6 major garbage patches that are created by gyres. Gyres are formed by the circular current patterns in the global conveyor belt. The other garbage patches are located in the North Atlantic, South Pacific, South Atlantic, Indian, and West Pacific oceans. The garbage patches are all equally problematic. A rough estimate of 1.2 - 2.4 million tons of plastic is entering the ocean each year. Most of these plastics are not dense enough to sink so they spend most of their time floating at the surface of the ocean. These pieces of plastic then hitch a ride along the conveyor belt and eventually make their way into the gyres. Garbage patches are roughly the size of 1.6 million square kilometers. Like I mentioned before, these patches hold 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic which is equivalent to 250 pieces for every human. It is a crazy concept that truly opens our eyes to human impact on the ocean.
The ocean's garbage patches consist of a variety of different types of plastic. Although, the majority of these patches is fishing nets lost of discarded by fishing companies. Nets trap and harm many different types of marine life and as well destroying coral reefs. In a recent clean-up, we were able to take out 40 tons of fishing net in a 25 day span. One of the more troubling aspects are the microplastics. These plastics are very small pieces that can be ingested by marine life and sea birds. This causes most to die from malnutrition. For an example, sea turtles who live near these patches have their diet consist nearly 74% of plastic. With the sea life consuming these plastics, its possible for us human to be exposed to this problem as well. This process is called bio accumulation. Chemicals and plastic will enter the body of the species eating the plastic. A predator then consumes the previous contaminated fish. Humans then catch and consume the predator fish resulting in our health being put at risk. These microplastics have been found in all of the food web starting at phytoplankton, zooplankton, crustaceans, smaller fish, all the way up to larger fish.
Unfortunately, we may not be able to get rid of all the plastic in the ocean. Although, if we do not make an effort to help this cause, these garbage patches will continue to grow in size and further harm marine life. One thing you can personally do is reduce the amount of single plastics including plastic bags, plastic bottles, straws, and many other small plastics. Instead, use reusable bags when you go grocery shopping or only use a reusable water bottle. This will prevent a good portion of plastic from reaching and polluting our beautiful oceans. Going green is one step in helping our planet breathe again.
Here are some great alternatives to plastic!
Here is our new and revolutionary way to clean our oceans created by Doyan Salt. His ocean clean up method is designed to extract plastic out of the ocean without hurting the existing marine life. They then take out the plastic then recycle it into reusable plastic pellets.
This a an awesome illustration explaining the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in a more understandable and in detail way.
This is a fascinating ted talk explaining an amazing way to help the problem of plastic pollution. Highly recommend listening to.
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