Bhavya Gutha
Cumming, Georgia
2016, Junior, Creative Writing

Marine debris and plastic pollution is a major problem in the ocean and threatens all marine life. Nearly 300 species eat and get caught in plastic litter. Around 80 percent of ocean litter comes from land, and plastic makes up the majority. The remaining 20 percent is made up of discarded fishing equipment and waste from ships. There is around 165 million tons of plastic in the oceans today. Marine debris and plastic pollution has and will take a heavy toll on marine life unless efforts are made by everyone to fix a colossal mistake.

There are several garbage concentrations in our oceans, mainly in areas called gyres. Gyres are huge spirals of seawater formed by colliding currents. A common misconception about these trash concentrations is that it is a trash island. It really is not. Holly Bamford states in What is the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch?, “We could just go out there and scoop up an island,’ Bamford says. ‘If it was one big mass, it would make our jobs a whole lot easier.” This statement explains in few words how much of a serious problem ocean debris is, and that though it would be difficult to scoop an island of trash out of the ocean, it would still be much easier to deal with than what the reality of the situation actually is. Bamford describes this reality as, “a galaxy of garbage, populated by billions of smaller trash islands that may be hidden underwater or spread out over many miles.”

Even though there is a high diversity of the trash, majority of it is plastic because everything else sinks or biodegrades. Plastic is not biodegradable and it does not sink. This is because “the microbes that break down other substances don’t recognize plastic as food, leaving it to float there forever.” (McLendon, par. 8.) However, sunlight breaks down the bonds in the plastic polymer, reducing the plastic into smaller bits, which only makes matters worse because it never really goes away and has higher chances of entering the food chain. When plastic degrades it releases toxins into the seas. Most of these toxins are polystyrene and bisphenol A (BPA), and they don’t occur naturally in the ocean. Plastic also has a tendency to absorb chemicals that cannot dissolve in water and gets coated with chemicals such as oil and any other pollutants that float in the sea, which makes it sticky and harmful to wildlife. Plastic can enter the food chain when fish eat tiny plastic bits thinking that it is food. The plastic that fish eat would not only have entered the food chain, but is also most likely to have absorbed toxins before being eaten by the fish.

Many scientists speculate that when fish eat plastic that has absorbed toxins, those toxins are then absorbed into the fish itself. If people eat fish that have absorbed toxins into its flesh, those people will also digest and absorb the toxins. This would increase diseases in our world, and there would most likely be a lot more cancer patients as well due to the effects of the toxins. Suppose a pregnant woman unknowingly eats one of these toxic fish. Not only will she be affected by these toxins, but so will the baby she is carrying. Both then have a likelihood of becoming extremely sick, and the woman might have a miscarriage. If the baby somehow survives, then it has a risk of being a sickly child with deformities and might not live very long. However, if the baby survives long enough until it had children of its own, and the children grow up to have children of their own and so on, those toxins and the problems that come with it can be passed on. This might already be happening in the world.

Fish or any other animal that eats plastic cannot digest it. Plastic is like junk food to most marine life. Once they eat it, they want more. They keep on eating the plastic and the plastic continues to pile up in its body until it dies from plastic overdose, or from the problems it gets if the plastics had absorbed toxins. This type of death is not uncommon for albatross chicks as well. When albatross parents go out to bring food for their young, they specifically look for fish eggs, which looks a lot like tiny plastic pieces. The parents mistakenly feed these plastic bits to their chicks, and soon the chicks die because of the plastic pileup in them. When the animals that have eaten plastic die and they start to decompose, the plastic in their body is out in the open again, ready to be eaten by another animal and bring the same fate to it as well. This also shows that plastic never really goes away, so people have got to start making efforts to reuse, reduce, and recycle.

There are several ways people can help out to stop this crisis. The first step everyone should follow is to remove as many unnecessary disposable plastics out of your daily life. A couple examples would be to bring your own bags to the store, choosing to use reusable items whenever possible, and purchasing plastic (or any other items) that have recycled content. Speaking of recycled content, the second step everyone should do is recycle. When plastic is recycled, it will be melted down and remolded again into something new. There is so much plastic in the world. The more it gets recycled, the less new plastic will be made, and there will be less plastic lost at sea. The third step is to help clean up the beach that is nearest to you. Many organizations host cleanups, and doing this for a few hours as often as you can will make a difference. If people do not live near a beach, the next best thing they can do is to support a legitimate organization that is dedicated to helping the oceans and removing the garbage that is stockpiling in them. They can donate money to the organization and/or spread the word to make more people help out and become conscious of this crisis.

Some people might think that, “There are already a lot of people making efforts to help so why should I? What difference would it make?” It may be true that in where you live there are a lot of people doing their job to help out. However, in other places there might be no efforts made because everyone is thinking along the same lines as to why they do not need to help out. Efforts that are being made will have an extremely small effect if almost everyone goes on thinking like this. This leads to the answer for the second question, which is a huge difference. WAKE UP!!! THESE PROBLEMS ARE REAL, NOT MADE UP! The oceans and the lives that call it home are dying a slow, painful death by plastic pollution and marine debris. The only way these problems will be fixed is when everyone makes an effort.

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Death by Plastic