Destruction of The Ocean

 

Denchak, Melissa, “Ocean Pollution: The Dirty Facts” 1-22-2018, https://www.nrdc.org/stories/ocean-pollution-dirty-facts  

 

 

This is an article I found online, about all the different types of pollution the ocean is facing and how humans are connected to it all. This article supports my topic of the Ocean’s Destruction, because pollution of the ocean has possibly the biggest impact on the ocean. This article includes many interesting facts about the pollution and includes sub-categories about the different types of pollution, such as the acidification, the literal trash, the noise and the off shore drilling, all of which have a negative impact on the ocean and the wildlife that live there. In the acidification category, it talks about how as we burn fossil fuels the ocean is absorbing nearly 25% of all the man-made carbon emissions, and this in turn decreases the pH of the surface waters and this leads to the ocean’s acidification. It also says that the ocean will be 150% more acidic in about a century if we continue at this pace. Acidification makes the level of carbonate go down which makes it difficult for creature that build shells out of calcium carbonate, which leads to a decrease in their survival ability. The next category they talk about is the trash in the ocean, and how nearly 80 million metric tons gets tossed and doesn’t biodegrade because it’s plastic. Not only is it trash but oil from boats, cars, planes, trucks, etc. make their way to sewers and/or directly into the ocean and adds to the difficulty for organisms to survive. Ocean noise is another big factor in the destruction of the ocean, and while this seemed a little weird to me, it still has a big impact on the ocean. Ships like oil tankers and cargo ships generate a huge amount of noise, and sound travels farther and faster in water than in the air. Many marine mammals rely on echolocation to communicate with each other, but all this noise makes it hard for them to communicate even a short distance, without the ability to communicate many of these species are struggling to survive. One of the biggest factors in making humans “superior” is that we can communicate with ease, imagine that we couldn’t communicate, do you think we could survive?