Why+Marine+Mammals+Can't+Stop+Eating+Plastic

[|Why Marine Mammals Can't Stop Eating Plastic] BBC Accessed on April 20, 2018

Even in the most remote areas of the open ocean, plastic flotsam can be found, with far-reaching consequences for marine life (Credit: BBC 2017)

In recent years, scientists have been astonished to discover that more and more marine mammals are consuming plastic. In fact, there are at least 180 species of marine mammals that have been observed for consuming plastic. There are many reasons behind this. One is simply that plastic exists in such a large amount in the ocean, with 12.7 million tons entering the ocean every year. Some mammals, such as the zoo plankton, mistake the plastic for food because it fits the size range of food material that they eat. When trying to understand this phenomenon, it's important to acknowledge that marine mammals base their hunting skills off of smell. In plastic, a chemical call dimethyl sulfide exists, and this attracts mammals such as birds.
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Some mammals mistake plastic for other mammals, based on things such as texture. For example, old sea turtles often eat soft, thin plastic bags because they think that it looks like jellyfish. Mammals also use echolocation to find their food, and because plastic is an object in the water, it can also be mistaken for food. Ultimately, plastic looks, smells, feels, and sounds like food to animals who have never experienced it before, especially in such large quantities.

In this course, we have studied the effects of human pollution on the environment, including the marine environment. In this article, the focus relates specifically human pollution and the effect on marine mammals. Specific sections on ocean pollution (Miller 543) discuss ways that human pollution has a specific negative effect on the quality of the water (Miller 550) and the animals that live in the water. (Miller 551) Our course also discusses conservation techniques that humans are using to combat water pollution. (Miller 244)
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In my opinion, humans must stop dumping plastic in ocean, especially because it is something recyclable. Instead, we need to come up with sustainable, renewable methods that reuse the plastic that we use. It is a necessity to keep plastic out of marine mammals mouths, because this kills them, reducing the biodiversity and ecosystem quality of the ocean, and also affecting human markets by decreasing healthy fishing supplies. The efforts we are making at the moment are very minuscule.
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The law that most closely relates to this environmental issue is the //Ocean Dumping Act of 1972//. This law regulates the intentional ocean disposal of materials. With this law actively enforced, we could reduce the amount of plastic put into the ocean and ultimately save the marine community.
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