Written Statement

Since the 1940’s, marine pollution has been increasing more than ever. Animals get caught in the marine debris and it causes crucial health problems. These animals eat and ingest the debris thinking it is food and it either ends up blocking the entry way to the animal’s stomach causing him to starve to death or it blocks the breathing passages and causes the animals to die because they cannot breathe. Marine Animals require very low amounts of chemicals such as copper, zinc, manganese, and cobalt. These chemicals are usually found in very low concentrations under water so marine animals have adapted to be able to obtain these chemicals in low doses and keep them on-hand so they can be used when needed. Some pollution contains these same chemicals only in extremely high concentrations which is too much for the marine animals and in some cases toxic. The chemical pesticides farmers use which are used to kill off insects and animals that might eat the plants come off the plants when it rains and make their way to the ocean and cause harm to fish as well as polluting and contaminating the water. The pesticides used at farms, gardens, orchards, and on crops, make their way to the ocean. The fat in the marine animals absorbs the pesticides and stays there which causes health problems, the inability to reproduce, and can even be fatal. Similar to agricultural pollution, cars also produce dangerous pollution as well. Whenever your driving your car around, there is smoke coming out the back. This smoke comes back as acid rain. Acid rain is rain that is mixed with pollution. When it gets into the ocean, it contaminates the water and kills a lot of the the organisms and fish beneath the water. Sometimes, when there are too many unwanted pesticides or toxins in the water where there is algae, the algae will rapidly reproduce and cover the water creating something known as an ‘Algal Bloom’. An algal bloom is a huge area of algae on top of the water which continues to grow rapidly, but each algae cell’s life is extremely short lived so the top of this algal bloom is covered in decaying matter. When matter decays, it sucks up the oxygen from the water leaving the body of water underneath the algal bloom without oxygen or with very little amounts. This causes many organisms under the water to die as well. Coral Reefs are being destroyed extremely quickly as well. Out of all the reefs in the world, 10% of them have already been destroyed. But, in such places such as the Phillipines, over 70% of their reefs are now gone while only 5% of their reefs are actually in good condition. We as humans, by polluting, have completely destroyed their environment. Coral Reefs had very specific needs of a specific temperature and a specific cleaness, water pollution causing both as well as global warming causes the huge increase in temperature under the water. The ocean makes up 70% of this planet in which we all live, so why don’t we care more about contaminating and polluting the ocean and everything beneath?