Plastic Garbage Island Research Paper

When a larger animal consumes the hazardous animal, it affects the entire food chain (“What Is Ocean”). Plastic garbage from ships collects in the oceans, where it is eaten by some animals, causing it to choke them or to block their stomachs (Claybourne 38). Littering raises the carbon dioxide levels in the ocean. The carbon dioxide in the trash raises the temperatures of the water, which can lead to coral bleaching. Most of the trash and debris released into the oceans cannot decompose, leaving it floating in the ocean for many years.

Another thing that effects the blue crab 's ecosystem is its environmental threats. To begin, one of the environmental threats that blue crabs face is pollution. In the text, it states, “Approximately 6.4 million tons of plastic and other debris enter the oceans each year. And every year., more than 1 million marine animals die from eating or getting caught in this debris,” (Dignan 13). This shows that an environmental threat that blue crabs face is pollution because if about 1 million animals are dying each year because of pollution, we have a serious problem.

When it does, researchers are able to find plastic out in the open ocean, where they weren't expecting it. The Sea Education Association's Proskurowski, when asked to comment on finding trash in the open ocean, they said that "finding plastic so far out in either ocean is sobering because it forces us into a physical confrontation with the human impact on the

The United States of America is one of the most wasteful countries on the face of the earth for a number of different reasons. In Bill McKibben's “Waste Not, Want Not,” McKibben states “There’s waste that comes from everything operating as it should, only too much so.”(332). The three most harmful kinds of waste that McKibben identifies are household waste, nuclear waste, and government waste. First, excessive household waste contributes to several of the environmental problems that we are facing today. McKibben writes, “More than 46,000 pieces of plastic debris float on each square mile of ocean.”(334).

The Chesapeake Bay is the largest estuary in the United States located between Maryland and Virginia lying inland from the Atlantic Ocean. It has more than 150 major rivers and streams covering parts of six states New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland Virginia and West Virginia. Nearly 17 million people live in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and affect the waters pollution. The Bay is very important to the economy of Maryland and Virginia providing economic resources, including crabs, oysters and rockfish, as well as recreational activities in and around the water. Due to the increase in the amount of pollution in the water, the wildlife and the recreational activities in the bay have slowly went down.

Hurricane Matthew killed over 46 people in the United States, along with over 1,000 in Haiti. Hurricane Matthew started out as a Category 1 Hurricane in South Carolina, but eventually developed to a Category 5 when it reached the eastern Caribbean. Hurricane Matthew was the most powerful storm since 2007. As we can tell, Hurricanes are the most violent of storms on Earth. Often we may hear them referred to as cyclones or typhoons, just depending on where they are occurring.

Luther King says in "9 Interesting Facts and Statistics about Littering", 1.9 billion tons of litter end up in the ocean. The ocean is another ecosystem made up of many diverse animals and plants. In “ 5 Ways Pollution Is Killing Animals”, Abigail Geer tells us that there are many things that can pollute the water ranging from noise, chemical and acid runoff, waste water and oils. All of these types of pollutions are affecting the marine life drastically. Abigail tells us that noise pollution is hurting animals that use sonar to get around are becoming closer to extinction.

Water Pollution Since Cuba is a primary tourist state with many industries, it creates tons of waste annually. In a year, roughly about 113.5 gallons of seawater are subject to the dumping of agricultural, industrial, and urban waste. Furthermore, 864 gallons of water in lakes and rivers throughout the country is also contaminated. A large part of the contamination comes from the ground after plants and trees have been soaked in fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides. The chemicals are absorbed into the ground and travel into surrounding bodies of water.

The Japanese Sea lion in the 70s, and The Baiji Chinese River Dolphin in 2006 have been victim to our careless actions. Let’s not make sharks the next. World leaders, I am not here to just tell you about the demise of sharks, but to ask you to take action to halt their demise because this problem is on all our hands. As we speak ships are carrying fins to destinations across the world to your country. Currently, there is no international law to prohibit the selling of shark fins.

Pollution is the introduction or release of substances or energy that decrease the quality of the marine environment. Many pollutants are toxic of harmful to marine life (Castro and Huber, 2010). South Africa is known around the world for being one of the most diverse marine environment in the world, with 83% of the known fish families residing in South Africa (Van der Elst, 2007). There are also many marine species that are endemic to South Africa, which means they are only found in South Africa. Almost 30% of the South African population lives on the coastline (Taljaard et al.