There is a lot of harm that comes from trash in the ocean. It affects sea life and even humans. Trash in the ocean, specifically plastic, is killing more than 100,000 sea turtles and birds a year from ingestion and entanglement. Trash in the ocean should be disposed of and we should stop hurting our environment!

The waste we throw in the ocean mostly affects our sea life. Fish and other sea dwellers, even birds might ingest the plastic. They also can get entangled in trash which can seriously harm them or even kill them. The sea life also has to deal with the pollution and dirty environment. As a result of fish eating trash it will affect us humans too. Humans will eat the sick fish that ingested plastic. This basically means that we are eating the plastic that we dump.

The types of trash that go into ocean are Plastic-Bottles, Plastic-Bags, Cigarettes, Food-Wrappers, Plastic-Utensils, Straws, Beverage Cans, Paper Bags, Styrofoam cups and more. Trash usually gets into the ocean by people littering, boaters and beach-goers directly dumping trash into water, and people throwing trash in rivers. There are also micro-plastics which are in soaps and cleaning products. These micro-plastics are very tiny and are not being filtered through our water filtration systems. Plankton which usually eats microorganisms mistake these micro-plastics as food. Larger fish eats these plastic infected plankton and through the food chain reaches us humans.

Many people have tried to find solutions for this problem.  One of the solutions was trying to make the laws for littering harder to break. There would be a greater fine if caught littering. A solution that I personally think would be effective is finding solutions to remove existing trash, such as removal of trash from creeks and rivers before it reaches the ocean.

The trash that people would throw away should be recycled and reused. This doesn’t guarantee that no trash would end up into the ocean because we can’t completely stop people from littering.If we can promote recycling more this will really reduce the amount of plastic and other trash that gets into the ocean.

Let’s remember, dumping trash and littering on land affects life in our oceans too, and eventually affects humans. We need to put more effort into fixing this problem.

About The Author:

Dev Sondhi is in 9th grade. He would like to help stop our oceans from getting polluted and make our world a better place.