How does the plastic get there?

About 20 percent of the plastic in the oceans comes from ships or offshore platforms; the rest is blown, washed off the land or intentionally dumped.

quick facts...

An estimated 14 billion pounds of trash, much of it plastic is dumped into the world's oceans every year.

The worldwide fishing industry dumps an estimated 150,000 tons of plastic into the ocean each year, including packaging, plastic nets, lines, and buoys.

Scientists have found that the amount of plastic particles in the oceans has at least tripled since the 1960s.

How does plastic effect our friends in the sea?

In the sea, big pieces of plastic look like jellyfish or squid, while small pieces look like fish eggs, so marine creatures eat the plastic debris mistaking it for food.

Marine trash, mainly plastic, is killing more than a million seabirds and 100,000 mammals and sea turtles each year by ingestion and entanglement.

A 2001 paper by Japanese researchers reported that plastic debris acts like a sponge for toxic chemicals, soaking up a million fold greater concentration of such deadly compounds as PCBs and DDE (a breakdown product of the notorious insecticide DDT), than the surrounding seawater. These turn into toxic gut bombs for marine animals which frequently mistake these bits for food. In the sea, big pieces of plastic look like jellyfish or squid, while small pieces look like fish eggs, so marine creatures eat the plastic debris mistaking it for food.

Most plastics don't biodegrade. Unless removed, they'll remain in the sea for hundreds of years, breaking up into ever-smaller particles.

Recently scientists discovered that microscopic pieces of plastic can be found everywhere in the oceans, even inside plankton, the keystone of the marine food chain.

A Sea of Plastic

The North Pacific Gyre is a region of the Pacific Ocean where the circular rotation of the currents draws waste material in. This has led to an enormous accumulation of debris that has become known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Historically, the waste material biodegraded and thus didn't cause any problems to the ocean. In modern times the majority of the waste is plastic. Plastic takes an extensive amount of time to break down, but rather than biodegrading, it disintegrates into smaller and smaller pieces which inevitably enter the marine food chain.

Plastic is a toxic material that is severly affecting marine creatures and the marine ecosystems and ultimately humans.

Want to Learn More?

There are many incredible organizations that are working to clean and protect our oceans. Please visit these sites to learn more about the issues and how you can help save our oceans and the marine creatures who call the water home.