In my mind, oceans are full of life. They are home to some of the most rarest creatures on the planet. Both the largest and the smallest creatures derive from the ocean, but these animals are facing a problem that needs to be solved. That problem is plastic. As plastic makes its way towards the ocean, animals often consume or get entangled by the trash. Whales and turtles are just some of the animals that are suffering from this pollution. Plastic has a long life, which means they are creating large groups of pollution because of the currents that are pushing them towards the home of marine creatures. Therefore, they are destroying ecosystems and coral reefs. I believe that there is a plastic pollution problem in our oceans and both humans and animals are affected by the ever growing amounts of plastic.
To start, plastic can take hundreds or maybe thousands of years to decompose. Shockingly, plastic bags take 10 to 20 years, plastic bottles take 450 years, and plastic beverage holders take 400 years to disappear. Many plastics become micro plastic, plastic you can’t see. It is especially dangerous to filter feeders like bowhead whales or whale sharks because they might eat it or it might get in their gills or blowhole.
Micro plastic is difficult to get rid of because it is hard to see. Even though people try to clean up the plastic with nets, they are unable to clean up the microplastics because it’s small enough to slip out of the holes in nets. Due to plastics long life, it can kill lots of animals while it is alive.
In addition, plastic harms various marine animals. For instance, micro plastic enters the mouth of a marine animal, intentionally and unintentionally because they mistake it for food, or due to its small size, it can easily be swallowed, as well. This makes it challenging or impossible to eat because animals can’t digest plastic. If an animal eats a lot of plastic, it will stack up inside the fish like legos and soon, the fish will die because it can’t digest plastic. Plastic bags look like jellyfish, making sea turtles eat, then choke on it.
No matter which species the animal is; shark, tuna, whale, or turtle, they are all victims of plastic pollution, 100 million sea animals die from plastic every year,as well as 1 million seabirds die. Not only are animals ingesting the plastic, they are also getting entangled in it. 11 million marine animals each year get entangled by plastic. Plastic beverage holders kill many seabirds because they can get their feet or neck stuck in it. Nets can trap many sea creatures while it’s floating through the water. Plastic pollution is also dangerous for humans. For instance if a fish gets sick from eating plastic and someone caught and ate it, that person would get sick with heart disease or type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, if people aren’t careful with their plastic pollution then that plastic will find its way on its plate and into our bellies. With that said, plastic pollution can kill a whole range of different species.
Lastly, plastic pollution negatively impacts the food chain. Filter feeders are not the only ones affected by the plastic, but predators are also affected by plastic as well. There is a type of parasite that lives on plastic. Most sharks have to always open their mouths in order to survive. This parasite takes advantage over that and enters through the shark’s mouth or gills and goes into their brain.
Once it has arrived, it slowly eats the shark’s brain, making the shark beach itself and die. If the sharks are wiped out, the seals and tuna will eat all the smaller fish, and with no one to stop them, the smaller fish would soon go extinct. If the smaller fish go extinct, the seals and tuna will go extinct with no food.Therefore, there would be nothing left in earth’s oceans. This shows how plastic disrupts a healthy food chain.
All in all, I think we have a plastic pollution problem in our oceans that is greatly affecting all species on Earth, including humans, which will result in wiping out thousands of species forever if we don’t try to solve this problem when we can. Plastic entangles or chokes over 11 million sea animals every year because they can’t digest plastic, microplastic, and lastly, food chain disruption. In my mind, we have a plastic pollution problem in our oceans and we have to solve it and if we don’t, we might have nothing in our oceans left for us to discover.
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