How Many Animals Die From Ocean Pollution

OCEAN PLASTICS POLLUTION

A Global Tragedy for Our Oceans and Sea Life

Plastic accumulating in our oceans and on our beaches has get a global crisis. Billions of pounds of plastic tin be plant in swirling convergences that brand up about 40 percent of the world'southward ocean surfaces. At current rates plastic is expected to outweigh all the fish in the ocean by 2050.

Plastics pollution has a straight and deadly consequence on wild animals. Thousands of seabirds and sea turtles, seals and other marine mammals are killed each twelvemonth after ingesting plastic or getting entangled in it. Endangered wildlife like Hawaiian monk seals and Pacific loggerhead bounding main turtles are amidst nearly 700 species that eat and go caught in plastic litter.

It's fourth dimension to get at the root of this ocean crisis. The Center has petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to begin regulating plastics as a pollutant and is working to stop plastic pollution at the source, before it ever has a chance to reach the ocean.

THE PLASTIC PROBLEM

We're surrounded by plastic. Information technology's in the single-use packaging we discard, the consumer goods that fill our stores, and in our clothing, which sheds microplastic fibers in the launder.

In the first decade of this century, nosotros made more plastic than all the plastic in history upwardly to the year 2000. And every year, billions of pounds of more plastic finish upwardly in the world's oceans. Studies estimate in that location are now fifteen–51 trillionpieces of plastic in the earth'south oceans — from the equator to the poles, from Arctic ice sheets to the sea floor. Not one square mile of surface sea anywhere on earth is free of plastic pollution.

The trouble is growing into a crisis. The fossil fuel industry plans to increment plastic production by 40 percent over the next decade. These oil giants are chop-chop edifice petrochemical plants across the U.s.a. to turn fracked gas into plastic. This ways more toxic air pollution and plastic in our oceans.

We demand urgent action to address the global plastic pollution epidemic.

Unfortunately, plastic is so durable that the EPA reports "every scrap of plastic ever made however exists." All five of the Earth's major sea gyres are inundated with plastic pollution. The largest one has been dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The Keen Pacific Garbage Patch

The Slap-up Pacific Garbage Patch is a gyre of plastic debris in the north-central Pacific Sea. Information technology's the largest aggregating of plastic in the world. But how big is it? Using the map beneath, click and elevate around the garbage patch (shown in ruby.) If y'all're on mobile, zoom in and employ two fingers to elevate more easily.

Map source

A HEAVY TOLL ON Wild fauna

Thousands of animals, from small finches to blue whales, die grisly deaths from eating and getting defenseless in plastic.

• Fish in the North Pacific ingest 12,000 to 24,000 tons of plastic each year, which tin can cause intestinal injury and death and transfers plastic up the food chain to bigger fish, marine mammals and human seafood eaters. A recent study found that a quarter of fish at markets in California contained plastic in their guts, mostly in the grade of plastic microfibers.
• Bounding main turtles tin mistake floating plastic garbage for food. They can asphyxiate, sustain internal injury and dice — or starve by thinking they're full from eating plastic. Tragically, research indicates that half of sea turtles worldwide have ingested plastic. New studies notice plastic pollution is and so pervasive on many beaches that its affecting their reproduction.
• Hundreds of thousands of seabirds ingest plastic every year. Plastic ingestion reduces the storage book of the stomach, causing starvation. It's estimated that lx percent of all seabird species have eaten pieces of plastic, with that number predicted to increase to 99 percent by 2050. Dead seabirds are oftentimes constitute with stomachs full of plastic, reflecting how the amount of garbage in our oceans has rapidly increased in the past 40 years.
• Marine mammals ingest, and get tangled up in, plastic. Big amounts of plastic droppings have been plant in the habitat of critically endangered Hawaiian monk seals, including in areas that serve every bit pup nurseries. Entanglement in plastic droppings has besides led to injury and mortality in the endangered Steller bounding main king of beasts, with packing bands the most mutual entangling material. Dead whales have been plant with bellies total of plastic.

FIGHTING Ocean PLASTIC POLLUTION

The Center for Biological Diversity is tackling this problem on multiple fronts. We've petitioned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency request the authorities to regulate plastics equally a pollutant nether the Clean Water Act and will keep pushing for plastic pollution to be treated as the hazardous waste that it is.

We've sued companies that turn plastic into consumer goods to ameliorate control their runoff. Nosotros're challenging the permits needed to build those new ethane cracker plants and organizing grassroots resistance to end them

There's nonetheless a lot of work to practice, only we're committed to the long struggle to reduce bounding main plastic pollution.

Source: https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/campaigns/ocean_plastics/

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