Biology Homework Help

Plastic is very much a part of all of our everyday lives. Although many of us are more aware and there are still movements being made, there still is an issue that is deep in the ocean that we don’t really know how to fix. There are garbage mounds forming in major ocean vortices, continually growing by accumulating floating debris of human waste. So as many and as large this waste is, there is a great amount of waste that is unseen. “The overwhelming amount and mass of marine plastic debris is beyond visual, made of microscopic range fragmented plastic debris that cannot be just scooped out of the ocean” (www#1). These microscopic plastics are what is the issue and really cannot be fixed. All that we can do is try to prevent the issue from getting worse. As of now, we need to find a way to dispose of or recycle our existing plastic waste. “In the ocean, plastic debris injures and kills fish, seabirds and marine mammals” (www#2). So for us, we are concerned about the sea animals who are dying, but it also alarming about those animals who are surviving and being contaminated. We are concerned about animals like sea turtles who often will confuse plastic bags with their normal food source like jellyfish (www#3), but we should also be concerned about animals like plankton. Although they are small, they eventually make their way into the larger animals and eventually us, through the food chain. So perhaps these animals and even we are surviving and passing these plastics through our digestive tract, but we are not yet aware of the dangers that it does on not only our animals as well as us (www#4).

Sources

www#1: When The Mermaids Cry: The Great Plastic Tide, http://plastic-pollution.org/ (Links to an external site.)

www#2: The Problem of Marine Plastic Pollution, https://www.cleanwater.org/problem-marine-plastic-pollution (Links to an external site.)

www#3: How Much Plastic is in the Ocean?, https://www.pbs.org/video/how-much-plastic-is-in-the-ocean-jpfpsf/ (Links to an external site.)

www#4: A Plastic Wave – A documentary film on plastic pollution, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-dpv2xbFyk

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