Julie Galinanes This year’s theme is “The Ocean: Life and Livelihood”
On June 8th World Oceans Day is celebrated throughout the world- https://oceanic.global/projects/united-nations-world-oceans-day-2021/. Did you know that oceans make up 70% of the world’s surface? Yes, that’s right! Oceans also provide most of the air that we breathe. We celebrate World Oceans Day in order to educate and create awareness on how pollution affects the world’s oceans, ecosystems, and marine animals and to learn what we can do to to prevent ocean pollution.
Pollutants
The pollution humans cause the ocean on an every day basis is vast, which is why it it so important to spread awareness of the damage that the pollution causes to our precious oceans and as well as its habitants. While there are many pollutants, such as ocean acidification caused by burning fossil fuels, noise caused by ships, and oil spills caused by off shore drilling that contribute to the pollution problem, it appears that marine debris caused by the use of plastics seems to be on the top of the list as it seems to be increasing significantly on a yearly basis. According to plasticoceans.org, we produce approximately 380 million tons of single-use purpose plastics PER year, 10 million of which end up in our oceans, and 1 million marine animals are killed each year because of plastic pollution caused by shopping bags, fishing gear, or microplastics – the breakdown of plastics into tiny pieces. Sea turtles, seals, seal lions, sea birds dolphins, whales, and fish are amongst some of the most commonly affected marine animals as they either ingest or become entangled in the plastic. By 2050, it is expected that there will be more plastic than fish in our world’s oceans. Currently, there are 5 garbage gyres found throughout the world which pull in litter, fishing gear and other marine debris and collect them in large “garbage patches” https://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/patch.html.
So what can you do to help?
Although it is still unclear what we can do to get rid of the pollution that currently exists, we can do our due diligence on a daily basis to prevent further plastic pollution from occurring.
- Use metal straws
- Use cloth bags for shopping
- Buy aluminum cans instead of plastic bottles
- Recycle
- Vote – legislate for cleaner oceans
- Find or start a beach clean up – https://www.nationalcleanupday.org/find-a-cleanup
Schools also put on bleach clean up events every year. This was my daughter’s school beach clean up in 2018 at Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park.
We are so lucky to live in South Florida and call this beautiful place our home. We should all do our part to help protect the ocean so we can continue to enjoy its beauty.
