A Sea of Plastic

Planet or Plastic

I could use this entry to write an exciting post-apocalyptic story about the harmful effects of plastic that we ignored for centuries, but instead I am going to let everyone know how real this issue is. The ocean, a sea of vibrant colors and fascinating life forms -known and unknown- is in danger of being destroyed by the human race. We, as a whole, are killing the oceans. Typically when I say this people tell me: "how can something that is not alive be killed?" My answer is simple: the ocean is alive. the ocean is made up of organisms as small as a speck of dust to as big as two school buses and everything in between. It is not just the water that makes the ocean alive and it is not just the organisms that make the ocean alive, it is everything combined that makes the ocean alive and that is what we are killing. The thing that is killing the ocean is something so common most people don't think twice about using it, but it can be deadly and not just to the oceans. Plastic: a modern day plague. 

There is not a single place on this earth that a person can go without seeing plastic. Whether it is your Starbucks  coffee in the morning or your tooth brush or the grocery bags you pick up when you go to the store, it is always there. Let's discuss the grocery bag first. A plastic grocery bag has a life span of approximately fifteen minutes on average. Is that fifteen minutes of convenience for a shopper worth the hundreds to thousands of years that plastic bag will be on the earth? Is that fifteen minutes of convenience worth the life of a sea turtle who just wanted something to eat? In the amount of time you have been reading this, fifteen thousand plastic bags have been used globally. How many of those plastics bags will end up in the oceans? How many sea turtles will mistake a plastic bag for a jelly fish? A sea turtles favorite food is jelly fish and a plastic bag floating through the water looks remarkably similar to a jelly fish, even to the human eye. A sea turtle will eat the plastic bag thinking it is food and the turtle will have a plastic bag in its stomach, which will create digestive and buoyancy problems for the turtle.  Sometimes you use plastics without even realizing it. Q-Tips have plastic in them and for a sea horse, who likes to wrap its tail around sea plants to stay still and safe, is dangerous. Sea horses latch onto the Q-Tips but continue to float through the waters away from what they perceived to be safe. Even sea birds are affected by plastic pollution. A study done by Plastic Oceans found that 90% of sea birds have consumed plastics. This is why the human race needs to choose the planet over plastic every day.