You know that feeling of having too much stuff
– gadgets, loose socks, maybe a couple of
abandoned fishing vessels?
Now imagine that multiplied by, oh, one trillion,
and you start to understand how the ocean
must feel about marine debris.
Marine debris is all the manmade stuff that
ends up in the ocean, from soda cans, plastic
bottles and the sun hat you lost last summer--to
abandoned fishing gear, entire vessels that
are sunken or marooned.
Whether it got there on purpose or by accident,
and even if that hat happens to fit a certain
octopus just perfectly, it still qualifies
as marine debris.
Scientists say there are 5 and a quarter pieces
of plastic alone in the ocean, and that’s
only part of the marine debris problem.
All that junk is killing and injuring sea
life, impeding navigation, leaching chemicals,
and even ending up in our food.
Plastics, for example, break down into tiny
particles that resemble fish eggs.
Fish consume those particles, we eat the fish
and, well, you know.
Marine debris is present in every ocean, carried
far and wide by currents and wind.
People – and probably some fish – are
working on ways to clean all this stuff up
but, as yet, nobody has found a solution…
or your hat, for that matter.
