Plastic in Oceans

While plastics have been a nuisance everywhere for quite a while now, one of the most affected places on this planet have been the oceans and water bodies. About 40% of the oceans surfaces have been covered in billions of pounds of plastic currently. Animals inside and outside the water are being affected by this infliction, birds have been seen ingesting plastics and many aquatic animals have been seen getting entangled in them. Research has estimated that about 15-51 trillion pieces of plastic can be found in the oceans.

The plastic ingested by fish in the oceans don’t only affect them but directly and slowly kill us humans too. Recently, a quarter of fish at markets in California, USA contained plastic in their guts. Several marine mammals such as the Hawaiian monk seals and Steller sea lions are being left endangered as they are at risk of being entangled in plastic debris and getting injured in unthought ways. Seabirds and sea turtles have been seen ingesting plastics and then dying due to starvation, this happens as when they ingest the large plastic pieces, their stomach storage space decreases and they consider themselves full and don’t receive the necessary nutrients they need, to live.

We cannot let this go on any longer, these animals are innocent and are facing the consequences of our actions. Several petitions have been placed against the government to regulate plastics as a pollutant and take large steps to help eradicate this problem, while this may be a solution on a larger scale you can always start on a smaller scale and simply recycle your plastics and not litter near oceans.