Pollution

By: Tommy Paonessa

        Imagine you're at the beach and just ate a scrumptious bag of chips but you don't want to take the hike to the nearest garbage, so you take a chance and chuck the bag right into the ocean. What you don't realize is you just cost a fish or a little baby turtle its life. 

        Pollution is seriously damaging the ocean. It's gotten to the point where there's a trash island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean the size of Texas. In length, it's 617,763 miles long, and 617,763 miles of trash is only 37% of all the pollution in the world. At the rate we're going, the ocean will be trash soup, and the aquatic life will decrease rapidly and poison the fish we eat. Microscopic organisms called fungi that live in the algae consume plastic and are eaten by herbivores and whales, and once consumed by the animal the organisms bond with the animal's flesh, turning it into a plastic taste in the fish. 

        The ocean animals' habitat is a big part of their health, and when it's clean they thrive. When it's dirty and polluted, forget about it; the saltwater animals have a better chance of living in freshwater than in the polluted water. Pollution is even worse in rivers and ponds. Over 50 % of rivers and ponds are too polluted for fishing, swimming and drinking. To make the ponds and rivers clean the U.S launched the clean water act. But this all spiraled out of control.   

        The local fishing areas are spiraling out of control, and the beaches are caked with trash. For example, Kamilo Beach, Hawaii is also known as Hawaii's plastic beach and is the most polluted beach in the world. The reason for this is because of people and the Pacific Garbage Patch, and with the command of tourists and the garbage patch the beach doesn't stand a chance even if people tried to clean up. The fish are all dying out, like Atlantic halibut and bluefin tuna. These two fish are a delicac, and an easy access fish. But With the fish dying, and with pollution skyrocketing, these fish won't be much longer. With all the dead fish and blood in the water the red tide will start and the water will become poisonous. Because of this people can't enjoy seafood on a regular basis, but the worst part is, the locals can't catch or sell fish. This leads to them losing their jobs or not being able to feed their families, thus making the industry go down as well as the population of ocean life. If this stays at the rate it's going it could cause massive extinction and lots of starving people. 

        Another issue is biodegradable plastics. Biodegradable plastics do dissolve in water, but only when the water gets to 90 degrees fahrenheit; then it will start to barely break down. Plastic doesn't even fully dissolve, so when the water cools back down, the plastic just reforms, and the chance of the water being that hot is slim; it can also kill the fish off from heat exhaustion or poisonous algae that forms when water temperature gets too high.

        Our waterways are our most important resource, and the more we pollute our water, the worse our environment will be. The more effort we put into our waterways, the better chance we have to keep our best resource.