Final Project: Boosting Mood - Pollution

          

Activists on Practice 

          The contamination of fresh water and sea water has transcended to the degradation of lakes, rivers, aquifers, oceans, and groundwater destroying and killing species that depend on them. Even though many campaigns have been done to increase awareness and help change that. We still have a long way to go.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

Facts:

-1.4 billion pounds of trash per year enters the ocean

-  Over one million seabirds are killed by ocean pollution each year.

-  One hundred thousand sea mammals are killed in the ocean by pollution each year.

-  There is an island of garbage twice the size of Texas inside the Pacific Ocean, North Pacific Gyre off the coast of California is the largest oceanic garbage site in the entire world.

                            

The Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.        

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water. The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The amount of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates because much of it is not biodegradable. Many plastics, for instance, do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.

1. About 80% of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from land-based activities in North America and Asia.
2. The remaining 20% of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from boaters, offshore oil rigs, and large cargo ships that dump or lose debris directly into the water.
3. The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch 70% of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
4. In the ocean, the sun breaks down these plastics into tinier and tinier pieces, a process known as photodegradation.
5. Microplastic block sunlight from reaching plankton and algae below.

Wildlife is paying the price

Birds are starving, lack of food resources and the garbage accumulated at the shore and at the sea force them to eat what they find available. It is affecting the life of many animal species.

As birds many other animals are suffering the consequences of plastic waste. 

Cleaning our Beaches

Reference:

Jeannie Ever. "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch." National Geographic. Sept 19, 2014. Web

                       https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/

Sharon Mathias. "Ocean Pollution" Sea life.gifts. April 6, 2016

                       https://www.sealife.gifts/blogs/ocean-conservation/148144263-ocean-pollution

Plastic Ocean Organization California