Plastic Killing Ocean Animals

Recycle everything you can.

Plastic killing ocean animals.

Eriksen knew that river plastics eventually become the ocean plastics that are now killing marine animals worldwide. Our ocean and the array of species that call it home are succumbing to the poison of plastic. Turning this tide starts at an individual level. Examples abound from the gray whale that died after stranding near seattle in 2010 with more than 20 plastic bags a golf ball and other rubbish in its stomach to the harbor seal pup found dead on the scottish island of skye its intestines fouled by a small piece of plastic wrapper.

However ocean garbage has been shown to kill many other animals in very similar ways. For animals plastic is turning the ocean into a minefield. Plastic pollution affects at least 700 marine species and some estimates suggest that at least 100 million marine mammals are killed each year by it. Every year australia dumps 130 000 tonnes of plastic into its oceans and this goes on to indiscriminately kill marine mammals birds and other creatures.

According to the us environmental protection agency epa the use of single use plastic packaging has grown from 120 000 tons in 1960 to 12 700 000 tons in 2006. The usage of plastic packaging has skyrocketed over the past fifty years. A plastic shard piercing an intestine can kill a bird quickly. The ocean supplies midway island with a constant stream of garbage.

13 thoughts on plastic is killing our oceans issues facts and possible solutions judes kingsbury reply. Since it won t digest they can t pass it through and they are unable to eat anything else. Use your own cutlery food containers and keepcups when getting takeaway rather than using disposable alternatives. It is hard to estimate exactly how many animals are affected by plastic in the oceans each year though.

Plastic pollution in the ocean is a massive and growing problem. Remnants of cultures all. Midway atoll a remote island situated on the edge of the great pacific garbage patch is covered with plastic debris swept. Animals who ingest large amounts of plastic end up with stomachs full of the stuff.

90 percent of the fledglings had already ingested some. As he traveled. After the trip he made it his mission to stem that flow ultimately founding with his wife anna cummins the 5 gyres institute a research and education organization named for the oceans large current systems.