ScienceDaily
Apr. 8, 2013
Summary: "Plastic production has increased 500 percent since 1980,
and plastics now account for 80 to 90 percent of ocean pollution..." Right
now, our waters are being harshly polluted by one main thing: plastic. This is
a problem all over the world in many lakes, oceans, and rivers, and specifically
the Great Lakes in this article. Fish and marine life are harshly being
affected by this plastic pollution and many are dying. Although this problem
has been widely recognized, not much has been done to further prevent it. Since
plastic is used in most everyday items in our lives, it is hard to stop this
constant pollution. Scientists have seen many pieces of plastic in fish
stomachs, and these plastic pieces are being passed up the food chain as well,
affecting more. A lot of these plastic pieces are so small that it is hard for just
any regular human to clean the waters without things like special technology.
Some scientists even found as much as 1.7 million pieces per square mile!
Overall, this problem is continually expanding and will not decrease unless
humans decrease their use of plastic.
This picture shows an ocean floor covered in plastic
pollution.
Opinion: I hope that technology starts to
develop that is able to detect small pieces of plastic in the water because it
is hurting the water animals, and can eventually hurt us. I found it so surprising
that up to about 2 million pieces of plastic per square mile were found. As
much as I do not enjoy lugging around a non-disposable water bottle or other
non-disposable items, I think it may be time to trade in plastic disposable
items such as plastic water bottles. These items are harshly affecting our
environment and I do not think fish and water creatures should have to suffer
because humans are too lazy to throw plastic items out. Hopefully, scientists
will quickly be able to develop an advanced system to scan and clean the
waters.
Questions:
Do you think this plastic pollution will
possibly be harmful to those higher in the food chain?
Would you start using less plastic if this
plastic pollution in water highly affected your area?
What kind of technology do you think the
scientists will use to get the plastic particles out of the water?
Opinion and New Questions:
ReplyDeleteI think this issue is awful! It is really messing up our oceans and our marine life. It also is not fair to the animals because they cannot do anything about it. This problem needs to be fixed, unless we want our oceans to become completely polluted. I agree with Madison on this topic completely. If we want to protect our marine life, then something needs to be done about this like advanced technology to detect small plastic pieces.
Questions:
1. How can we prevent the oceans from becoming completely polluted?
2. Do you think advanced technology would be a good solution to this problem?
3. Besides technology, what are other possible solutions to this problem?
Answer Questions:
ReplyDelete1.) Do you think this plastic pollution will possibly be harmful to those higher in the food chain?
I think it will. Since plastic particles can easily be so small that they don't kill the animals that they are eaten by, they can become like other pollutants, like pesticides, and travel up the food chain. Since organisms higher on the food chain need to eat more organisms to get the energy that they need, through bioaccumulation, they will end up poisoned through the large amounts of plastic in their bloodstream.
2.) How can we prevent the oceans from becoming completely polluted?
I think the main way to do so would be to decrease our plastic usage in general. So many people use disposable plastic objects (water bottles, snack bags, grocery bags) instead of reusable ones, and these objects don't even get recycled. If everyone decided to use reusable objects, it could decrease our plastic disposal by a lot, and therefore decrease the amount of pollution as well.
3.) Do you think advanced technology would be a good solution to this problem?
I think it would be a good solution. The technology that we have today can access all the information in the world in a fraction of a second; if we can turn that around and use it to save our oceans from a massive amount of plastic pollution, I think it would be very worthwhile. It always seems as if we as humans are on the edge of a new technological breakthrough, mainly because we are, and it's about time we start using that technology to help the other organisms of the earth as well as ourselves.
Expand on the Topic:
ReplyDeleteI found a very interesting YouTube video called Plastic Pollution + Possible Solutions. It shows many different and surprising statistics about plastic production and the pollution it causes throughout the oceans. It also explains the damages these plastic products, mainly plastic bags, have on aquatic organisms. The video offers some ways to reduce the amount of plastic per person. The thing I found the most interesting was if 1 out of every 5 people in the US started to only use reusable cloth bags instead of plastic bags, we would save 1,330,560,000,000 bags in one lifetime! That sounds amazing!
Check out the video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPgbtr8Prw8
I have emailed a professional named Robert Ballard. He is a professors on oceanography and he was involved in finding parts of the titanic. I figured that he may have an opinion about pollution in the ocean. This is the email I sent him.
ReplyDeleteHello Dr. Ballard,
Im a student at Hatboro Horsham High School, and my science class is writing blogs. The blog is on topics we are learning in class and the blog topic this week was ocean pollution. I was wondering if you would like to comment on the blog. It can be found here:
http://brainybloggers101.blogspot.com/2013/04/polluting-plastic-particles-invade.html
Thank you,
Max Griffith