Plastic Pollution
There are 400 billion stars in the Milky Way while 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic reside in our oceans.
Massive quantities of marine debris circulate within currents across the globe. One floating pile of trash, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, lies in the North Pacific Ocean spanning nearly 7 million square miles. It is estimated that plastic comprises 60-80% of marine debris in the world’s oceans. This debris directly impacts marine life and can disrupt an entire food web.
Studies show that ingested marine debris is common in samples of dead and captured seabirds and turtles, indicating that many marine organisms mistake small bits of plastic and trash for food. The ingestion of the debris causes various effects in marine life including reducing the absorption of nutrients, uptake of toxic substances that comprise the debris and blockages of digestive processes.
Entanglement of debris results in significant direct physical harm and mortality in marine species, and also can have damaging effects on marine habitats such as coral reefs and sea grass destruction.
One of the indirect disruptions of ecological functions include blocking sunlight to the autotrophs. Autotrophs are small marine organisms that feed off sunlight and provide food to the bottom of the food chain. Once the autotrophs’ productivity collapses, a chain reaction results in the reduced productivity of all other larger marine organisms up the food chain.