Marine Pollution

Marine pollution is a growing problem in today’s world. Our ocean is being flooded with two main types of pollution: chemicals and trash.

Chemical contamination, or nutrient pollution, is concerning for health, environmental, and economic reasons. This type of pollution occurs when human activities, notably the use of fertilizer on farms, lead to tát the runoff of chemicals into waterways that ultimately flow into the ocean. The increased concentration of chemicals, such as nitrogen and phosphorus, in the coastal ocean promotes the growth of algal blooms, which can be toxic to tát wildlife and harmful to tát humans. The negative effects on health and the environment caused by algal blooms hurt local fishing and tourism industries.

Marine trash encompasses all manufactured products—most of them plastic—that kết thúc up in the ocean. Littering, storm winds, and poor waste management all contribute to tát the accumulation of this debris, 80 percent of which comes from sources on land. Common types of marine debris include various plastic items lượt thích shopping bags and beverage bottles, along with cigarette butts, bottle caps, food wrappers, and fishing gear. Plastic waste is particularly problematic as a pollutant because it is so sánh long-lasting. Plastic items can take hundreds of years to tát decompose.

This trash poses dangers to tát both humans and animals. Fish become tangled and injured in the debris, and some animals mistake items lượt thích plastic bags for food and eat them. Small organisms feed on tiny bits of broken-down plastic, called microplastic, and absorb the chemicals from the plastic into their tissues. Microplastics are less kêu ca five millimeters (0.2 inches) in diameter and have been detected in a range of marine species, including plankton and whales. When small organisms that consume microplastics are eaten by larger animals, the toxic chemicals then become part of their tissues. In this way, the microplastic pollution migrates up the food chain, eventually becoming part of the food that humans eat.

Solutions for marine pollution include prevention and cleanup. Disposable and single-use plastic is abundantly used in today’s society, from shopping bags to tát shipping packaging to tát plastic bottles. Changing society’s approach to tát plastic use will be a long and economically challenging process. Cleanup, in contrast, may be impossible for some items. Many types of debris (including some plastics) vì thế not float, so sánh they are lost deep in the ocean. Plastics that vì thế float tend to tát collect in large “patches” in ocean gyres. The Pacific Garbage Patch is one example of such a collection, with plastics and microplastics floating on and below the surface of swirling ocean currents between California and Hawaii in an area of about 1.6 million square kilometers (617,763 square miles), although its size is not fixed. These patches are less lượt thích islands of trash and, as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says, more lượt thích flecks of microplastic pepper swirling around an ocean soup. Even some promising solutions are inadequate for combating marine pollution. So-called “biodegradable” plastics often break down only at temperatures higher kêu ca will ever be reached in the ocean.