Fantastic Voyage - Research

Affect in Marine Life:

- Shoppers worldwide are using approximately 500 billion single-use plastic bags per
year

- 100,000 marine creatures a year die from plastic entanglement and these are the ones
found

- Approximately 1 million sea birds also die from plastic

- A plastic bag can kill numerous animals because they take so long to disintegrate. An
animal that dies from the bag will decompose and the bag will be released, another
animal could harmlessly fall victim and once again eat the same bag.

- It can take anything between 20-1000 years for a plastic bag to break up. I mean break
up as they break up into smaller pieces. They don’t break down and those that do,
break down into polymers and toxic chemicals

- It takes just 4 family shopping trips to accumulate 60 shopping bags.

- At least two thirds of the world’s fish stocks are suffering from plastic ingestion

- Many turtles, that have been killed by consuming debris, had plastic bags or fishing line
in their stomachs, some as small as half of a fingernail. Sea turtles are especially
susceptible to the effects of consuming marine debris due to their bodies’ own
structure. They have downward facing spines in their throats which prevent the
possibility of regurgitation. The plastics get trapped in their stomach, which prevents
them from properly swallowing food. Also, many sea turtle rehabilitation facilities
commonly deal with “bubble butts,” turtles that float as a result of trapped gas caused
by harmful decomposition of marine debris inside a turtle’s body. The gases cause the
turtle to float, which leads to starvation or makes them an easy target for predators.

Entanglement

- Marine wildlife often becomes entangled in discarded fishing equipment such as ropes,
nets and lines. Known collectively as "Ghost Nets", it is estimated that there are over
650,000 tonnes drifting in our oceans today which will remain in that form for about 600
years before breaking up into micro plastic. Plastic bags and bottle rings can also
engulf and smother or become wrapped around parts of the animal. Often
entanglement leads to wounding or drowning of animals when they can no longer
swim.

- One of the major problems with the plastic is that the contaminants cause premature
death in animals. They can be ingested, leading to a painful death, and other dangers
include strangulation or slow starvation if wildlife becomes imprisoned in the plastic.
There is also concern about animals using the islands as transportation. They can end
up far from their usual habitat and find themselves in unfriendly waters.

- Plastics also contain chemicals that are slowly released into the waters and the
atmosphere. As fish breath in the chemicals from the water it ends up contaminating
them. Fishermen then catch the fish and this contamination ends up back in the human
food chain.

Read more at http://www.earthtimes.org/pollution/plastic-contamination-atlantic-ocean/377/

#hlVHvw6PKG3exExP.99

Ingestion

- Around 90% of seabird species, 22% of large marine mammals, such as whales and
dolphins, all sea turtle species, and a growing list of fish species have been
documented with plastic in their gut. When marine animals eat plastic they can die
from internal blockages, dehydration and starvation.

- Studies by the Sea Education Association, (SEA), in the Atlantic have documented

plastic pollution in the North Atlantic Gyre. As plastic particles circulate through
oceans, they act as sponges for waterborne contaminants such as PCBs, DDT and
other pesticides, PAHs and many hydrocarbons washed through our watersheds.
These persistent organic pollutants, called “POPs”, absorb onto plastic pollution in
high concentrations. Plastic pollution is not a benign material in the ocean. Scientists
are studying whether these POPs transfer to the marine organisms that mistakenly
consume them.

- In fact, not only do the toxins in plastic affect the ocean, but acting like sponges, they
soak up other toxins from outside sources before entering the ocean. As these
chemicals are ingested by animals in the ocean, this is not good for humans. We as
humans ingest contaminated fish and mammals.

Ocean Gyres

North Pacific Gyre is also home to what has been called the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage
Patch

- There are 5 ocean gyres in the world where plastic gathers due to current circulation.
These gyres contain millions of pieces of plastic and our wildlife feed in these grounds.

Microplastic concentration in the north pacific gyre increased 100x in the last 40 years

Plastic contains toxic chemicals

More toxic adhere as plastic breaks down (DDT, PCB, PAH)

Microplastic

Friendly Floatees

A shipping container filled with rubber duckies was lost at sea in 1992, and the bath
toys are still washing ashore today.

In 1992, a shipping crate containing 28,000 plastic bath toys was lost at sea when it fell
overboard on its way from Hong Kong to the United States.

Today that flotilla of plastic ducks are being hailed for revolutionizing our understanding of
ocean currents, as well as for teaching us a thing or two about plastic pollution in the
process.

Sea turtles

They grow slowly and take between 15 and 50 years to reach reproductive maturity,
depending on the species. There is no way to determine the age of a sea turtle from its
physical appearance. It is theorized that some species can live over 100 years.