Ocean Pollution Kills Sea Animals
Cause of death? An inflammation of its abdominal tissues caused by the presence of nearly 30 kilograms of indigestible plastic. Among the items recovered in its gut were shopping bags, fishing nets and a jerry can.
While it’s difficult to know exactly how many marine animals are killed by plastic pollution, it’s been estimated that plastic pollution kills 100, 000 marine mammals every year. 81 out of 123 marine mammal species are known to have eaten or been entangled in plastic, and all seven sea turtle species are affected.
There are two principle ways that encountering marine debris can be fatal for these creatures: ingestion (eating) or entanglement in plastic-based fishing gear.
Plastic Pollution Affects Sea Life Throughout The Ocean
It’s estimated that 56% of the planet’s whale, dolphin and porpoise species have consumed plastic, but to understand why you need to see the world as they do.
A plastic bag ballooned with water can look a lot like squid, or other prey, to the seals and marine mammals that hunt them.
Even species that don't identify prey by sight aren’t safe. Toothed whales, and many species of dolphin, use a sophisticated sonar-type technique called echolocation to find their prey. Some scientists believe that unnatural objects such as plastic waste confuse this sonar, and are incorrectly interpreted as food.
How Are Fish Affected By Water Pollution?
It’s possible that such a mistake led to the death of a pregnant pygmy sperm whale discovered stranded on a beach near Melbourne. This whale was euthanised after unsuccessful rescue attempts, and an autopsy revealed a stomach clogged with ingested plastic.
The other way that plastic pollution effects ocean mammals is through entanglement, and one of the worst offenders here is abandoned fishing gear.
An estimated 640, 000 tonnes of the eight million tonnes of plastic that enters the oceans every year is so-called ghost fishing equipment, gear that’s either deliberately jettisoned or washed from ships or shorelines.
The Problem Of Marine Plastic Pollution
The results from recovered ghost nets are devastating, and show that it isn’t only mammals that are at risk. Here are the combined contents of two ghost nets taken from the waters around the Tiwi Islands and Darwin respectively:
Rare species such as the humpback dolphin, which is only found in waters around Australia and New Guinea, have been observed with marine debris wrapped tightly around their bodies. If the plastic isn’t dislodged, it can cut deep into their skin, leaving the animals open to the risk of deadly infections.
Marine mammals, of course, don’t understand the dangers plastics pose to them. This problem was created by humans, and only humans can fix it.
How Does Plastic Pollution Affect The Ocean?
Every year in Australia 130, 000 tonnes of plastic leaks into our oceans, and this goes on to indiscriminately kill marine mammals, birds and other creatures.An old plastic fishing net snares a loggerhead turtle in the Mediterranean off Spain. The turtle could stretch its neck above water to breathe but would have died had the photographer not freed it. “Ghost fishing” by derelict gear is a big threat to sea turtles.
This story is part of Planet or Plastic?—our multiyear effort to raise awareness about the global plastic waste crisis. Learn what you can do to reduce your own single-use plastics, and take your pledge.
On a boat off Costa Rica, a biologist uses pliers from a Swiss army knife to try to extract a plastic straw from a sea turtle’s nostril. The turtle writhes in agony, bleeding profusely. For eight painful minutes the YouTube video ticks on; it has logged more than 20 million views, even though it’s so hard to watch. At the end the increasingly desperate biologists finally manage to dislodge a four-inch-long straw from the creature’s nose.
What Is The Effect Of Ocean Plastics On Marine Life?
Raw scenes like this, which lay bare the toll of plastic on wildlife, have become familiar: The dead albatross, its stomach bursting with refuse. The turtle stuck in a six-pack ring, its shell warped from years of straining against the tough plastic. The seal snared in a discarded fishing net.
But most of the time, the harm is stealthier. Flesh-footed shearwaters, large, sooty brown seabirds that nest on islands off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, eat more plastic as a proportion of their body mass than any other marine animal, researchers say: In one large population, 90 percent of the fledglings had already ingested some. A plastic shard piercing an intestine can kill a bird quickly. But typically the consumption of plastic just leads to chronic, unrelenting hunger.
Left: Some animals now live in a world of plastics—like these hyenas scavenging at a landfill in Harar, Ethiopia. They listen for garbage trucks and find much of their food in trash.
Kenya: Marine Debris Threaten To Suffocate Sea Animals
Right: On Okinawa, Japan, a hermit crab resorts to a plastic bottle cap to protect its soft abdomen. Beachgoers collect the shells the crabs normally use, and they leave trash behind.
“The really sad thing about this is that they’re eating plastic thinking it’s food, ” says Matthew Savoca, a marine biologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “Imagine you ate lunch and then just felt weak and lethargic and hungry all day. That would be very confusing.” Fish such as anchovies, Savoca has found, eat plastic because it smells like food once it’s covered with algae. Seabirds, expending energy their malnourished bodies don’t have, roam farther in search of real food, only to drag back plastic waste to feed their young.
What makes plastic useful for people—its durability and light weight—increases the threat to animals. Plastic hangs around a long time, and a lot of it floats. “Single-use plastics are the worst. Period. Bar none, ” Savoca says, referring to straws, water bottles, and plastic bags. Some 700 species of marine animals have been reported—so far—to have eaten or become entangled in plastic.
Sea Animals Water Pollution Hi Res Stock Photography And Images
We don’t fully understand plastic’s long-term impact on wildlife (nor its impact on us). We haven’t been using the stuff for very long. The first documented cases of seabirds ingesting plastic were 74 Laysan albatross chicks found on a Pacific atoll in 1966, when plastic production was roughly a twentieth of what it is today. In hindsight, those birds seem like the proverbial canaries in a coal mine.
The photographer freed this stork from a plastic bag at a landfill in Spain. One bag can kill more than once: Carcasses decay, but plastic lasts and can choke or trap again.
A major citizen suit against a giant plastics company resulted in a huge payout and a commitment to do better. The case has set off ripples of change across an industry that often pollutes with impunity.
How Many Marine Animals Die From Plastic Each Year?
Scientists are stumped at the strange behavior of these killer whales in the Salish Sea. Is it playtime that got a little too rough, a misguided attempt to parent—or something else?Increased amounts of trash, particularly plastics and lost or discarded fishing gear, are finding their way into the ocean, creating a threat of entanglement or ingestion for countless marine animals.
Protection means actively eliminating or reducing risks, and we all have a part to play in shielding and safeguarding the ocean habitat from harm.
Ocean trash is a general term for all the human-created debris that makes its way into the ocean from a variety of methods. About 90 percent of the trash found in the ocean is plastic, and the large amounts of trash are having an impact on marine life and marine ecosystems.
Plastic Pollution Is Killing Coral Reefs, 4 Year Study Finds
Each year, the world produces over 380 million tons of plastic. While plastic is an amazing invention, due to its chemical properties it can’t biodegrade and is very difficult to recycle, meaning that most of it is getting into the environment where it can last forever.
About 80 percent of the trash found on beaches comes from single-use disposable plastics, such as bottles, utensils, straws and food wrappers. In addition to being an eyesore, plastic in the environment can pose a deadly threat to marine animals.
Given these pieces of trash are items we might use in our daily lives, we have the ability to switch what materials we use, and talk to businesses and communities leaders about how to shift materials to more environmentally friendly items that already exist.
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Because plastic is made by chemically altering petroleum (or oil), it is not able to go back into nature. While plastic never really goes “away, ” it does break apart into smaller and smaller pieces over time due to sunlight or wave action. These smaller, sometimes even microscopic, pieces of plastic still play a big role in the environment and can endanger the health of both animals and people.
While scientists still have many questions on the impact of microplastics, there is one thing we do know: plastics are everywhere. Scientists have found large quantities of microplastics in essentially every environment, ranging from the tops of mountains to the bottom of the ocean.
Researchers have found microplastics in the bodies of both marine animals and people. Studies have shown that microplastics can impact growth rates or fertility of smaller fish and zooplankton. Scientists have also found microplastics in the bodies of dolphins and whales that have stranded on beaches around the world.
How Oil Spills Affect Fish And Whales
While the impact on human health is still less clear, microplastics have been found in huge quantities in bottled water and
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