Human Impact on the Ocean
We hear it all the time "humans are hurting the ocean!" So much so that there are too many things that "they" say that some of us just don't care anymore. "Your car is polluting the air and harming the ocean!" or "You're drinking out of a plastic water bottle? Do you even care about the ocean?" A lot of this is hard to make sense of when there are so many voices shouting so many different things that it all meshes together and the only common denominator is that, what ever it is, it's harming the ocean. So lets just start with one thing and make sense of that before tackling everything wrong with us. The topic is one you may not think of when it comes to us humans harming the ocean: your sunscreen.
If you are like me, you've never thought anything else about your sunscreen than just trying to avoid getting a burn. but surprisingly enough, if you wear the wrong sunscreen, you can cause some issues with ocean wildlife. If you choose to go into the ocean whilst wearing sunscreen, it will ironically wash off and contaminate a surprising amount of water. But there is a way to protect your skin and not harm the ocean.
Chemical sunscreen has toxic ingredients like oxybenzone which washes off and kill corals and one drop can infect the ocean to the size of an Olympic size pool. The alternative is a mineral based sunscreen stays on the surface of your skin and will mirror off the sun, unlike the chemical sunscreen which absorbs into your skin and can be a problem for these with sensitive skin. When the mineral sunscreen washes off it wont damage the ocean/corals.
So choose your sunscreen carefully, it could save a coral or two. There are many ways to help the ocean out, today you learned one, go from there. Find new things to learn, or when they come to you, take them in. Don't let all the big talk overwhelm you, start with one thing and once you've got that down, find another.