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What Is The Effect Of Pollution On Marine Life

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About 71 percent of our planet Earth is covered by water, and the majority comes from the oceans (about 96.5 percent of all Earth’s water). It remains as the most expansive, diverse, and mysterious places on planet Earth. But it is being threatened by the pollution by people and nature itself. By polluting the habitat of marine organism will indirectly affect the ecosystem of the marine life. Marine life is dying and as the result the oceanic ecosystem is threatened.
Before, it was assumed that because the ocean was so big, vast, and deep, that the effects of dumping trash and littering into the sea will only have minimal consequences. But after decades of littering, we have seen the consequences. Oil spills, floating plastic, and toxic wastes …show more content…

Such as sea turtle, whales, and other marine mammals, and more than one million seabirds die each year from ocean pollution.
Plastic bags are petroleum based material and is not biodegradable. While floating on the water it looks like sea organisms (such as jellyfish), Sea turtles often mistake plastics and other garbage as food and eat them. This mistake can causes fatal blockages in their digestive system and lead to …show more content…

Ocean polluting has big impact on human’s health too. As those chemicals are ingested by the animals, it is not good for humans. Because we are at the end of the food chain, we consume contaminated fish and mammals. We might consume much more toxic chemicals than the sea animals.
There are different types of ways that plastic is dangerous for humans. Direct toxicity from plastics comes from lead, cadmium, and mercury. These toxins have also been found in many fish in the ocean, which is very dangerous for humans. Some carcinogenic toxic chemicals are also found in plastic which directly linked to cancers, birth defects, immune system problems, and childhood developmental issues.
Other types of toxic plastics are BPA. Both of these are of great concern to human health. BPA is used in many things including plastic bottles and food packaging materials. Over time the polymer chains of BPA break down, and can enter the human body in many ways from drinking contaminated water to eating a fish that is exposed to the broken down toxins. Specifically, BPA is a known chemical that interferes with human hormonal

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Sarah Freeman’s article in The Ethicalist explains the negative effects humans have on the ocean. These negative effects include plastic pollution, global warming, and worst of all, overfishing. Overfishing occurs when a fish species is wild caught faster than it can reproduce. This leads to fewer fish in the ocean, meaning less marine biodiversity (Freeman). After Freeman spends most of her article explaining how the oceans are suffering, she then starts talking about what can be done to prevent a baren sea.

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In the New York Times, on Sept. 28, 2014, Lewis Pugh writes an editorial called “Swimming Through Garbage.” He describes his experiences traveling into the seven seas and makes a claim to draw attention towards the health of our oceans. First, Pugh describes the litter, plastic bags, bottles, cans, shoes, and clothing on our ocean floor. However, Pugh was even more shocked about what he didn’t see, no sharks, no whales, no dolphins, all living life had been fished out (Para 4-5). Pugh says that over 100 million sharks are fished out of the ocean every year (Para 7).

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