Plastic Pacific

That gray blob above the scale outline
of Texas is the approximate location
and size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

WHAT'S UP, PEOPLE? Hey, guys... I want to talk about a very serious issue that has been around since the invention of a thing called plastic. As many of you may know, the ocean is one of the most polluted environments on earth. We humans dump over 14 billion pounds of garbage into the oceans every year. There is actually a legitimate patch of floating garbage in the Pacific Ocean which is twice as large as the state of Texas. Most of this waste is plastic! Plastic is made from petroleum, a substance that the ocean cannot digest, or decompose. So over thousands of years, the bits of plastic just get smaller, and break up, but never completely decompose. So, there ends up being trillions of little specs of plastic. You might be wondering, "What's so bad about little microscopic pieces of plastic?" Even though those little tiny specs may not harm larger fish and other animals directly, the particles set off a chain of events. Not a good one, either.

More Plastic Than PLANKTON???

This is what pretty much happens: Microscopic flecks of plastic are eaten by plankton. Plankton die, or get sick. Now there is 6x as much plastic as plankton, and most of the plankton are now contaminated. These contaminated plankton are then consumed, along with the larger pieces of plastic, by small fish. This fish is now contaminated. Repeat this scenario all the way to the top of the food chain, and shazam! You have an entire ecosystem of either dead or contaminated organisms! 

Jellyfish tangled in plastic debris.

It is really sad, if you ask me. But that isn't even the worst part. There is already so much plastic floating in the ocean that marine ecologists and marine engineers are no longer trying to figure out how to remove it all. In harsher words, we pretty much screwed ourselves beyond the point of return.




According to scientists, our only hope as of today is to stop contributing to the trash dump which used to be our beautiful oceans.




That being said, I want to point you towards Recycling 101. This site will tell you all you need to know about the habit that just might save the world: RECYCLING! Now that you've read this, pick up a bottle when you see it lingering around a gutter or in a pond. You never know what kind of animals' lives you just might save.