Effects on Marine Life because of Plastic

Imagine you are a mama whale. You and your pod are swimming nicely. You suddenly see a piece of something that looks like a school of fish. You devour it. 30 minutes after, you feed your calf milk. 5 minutes later, the calf dies. Why? Because of the water? No. Because of that “school of fish,” you ate. It was actually a bunch of plastic bottles.

About 800 species of marine life are being affected because of the debris that is dumped into the ocean. 80 percent of that is plastic. Many animals such as fish, sea turtles and marine mammals can get trapped and tangled with the plastic and debris easily. That causes suffocation, drowning, and starvation. Plus, some marine animals will mistaken plastic for food.

According to scientists, about 60 percent of seabirds have died because of plastic. Scientists have predicted that if the situation is not stopped by 2050, almost 99 percent of the seabirds will be gone.

When the marine animal eats the plastic that falls into the ocean, it cannot be digested by the animal. It stays in the gut. That causes marine animals to die. It is estimated that more than 100,000,000 marine lives are lost because of plastic.

Scientists find animals dead on the beach coast. They cut open the animal. They find lots of plastic. When scientists find animals that are not dead on the beach coast, sometimes the animal’s life is able to be saved. 

Plastic takes thousands of years to dissolve. When an animal dies because of plastic, it will decay away. When it decays, the plastic is freed from the animal’s stomach. When that happens, it carries on killing marine life.

You can help stop that incident by cutting down on the amount of plastic you use. When you go to the grocery store, you can get your own bags. (Anything that is not plastic.) Or if the grocery store has paper bags, you could use those. Those are good to use because when it is done being used, you can bury it instead of throwing it away. (It is paper, and paper is made out of trees, so the paper will decay since it is a source of nature.) You can also cut down on the number of plastic straws that you use. The more you stop using plastic, the more animals in the ocean would be saved, and the more marine life we would have on our Earth.

So please, cut down on the use of plastic. I hope you learned some about what effect they give on marine life.