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Ocean Pollution Facts

Ocean Pollution Facts
Ocean pollution occurs when potentially harmful or harmful sources of pollution reach the water. These sources of pollution can include residential waste, industrial waste, agricultural waste, chemicals, particles, and invasive organisms. Most of the sources of ocean pollution originate on land, from runoff, blowing debris, dust, and contamination from excessive nutrients, toxins such as pesticides and metals, and particles. Many of the most harmful ocean pollutants are not the ones we can see, but instead are the ones that leach into the marine ecosystem, causing diseases and mutations, not only in the marine life but in the humans and animals that consume them.
Interesting Ocean Pollution Facts:
Some of the ocean pollution that we can see includes floating plastic, oil spills, and trash.
Plastic is one of the most common ocean pollutants. It does not break down rapidly and marine life often eats it after mistaking it for food.
Land based pollutants include oil, septic sludge, dirt, and trash.
Each day thousands of tons of trash and waste are dumped into the oceans of the world.
Ocean pollution kills more than one million sea birds each year.
Discarded fishing nets kill approximately 300,000 dolphins and porpoises every year. The dolphins and porpoises get tangled in the nets and die.
Much of the waste that is dumped into the ocean will wash up on the coast polluting everything it comes into contact with, including beaches, animals, and sea life.
There is an ocean garbage site off the coast of California twice as large as the state of Texas. It is called the North Pacific Gyre and is the largest garbage site in the ocean in the world.
Although oil spills pollute the ocean, they only account for approximately 12% of the oil polluting the ocean. The rest reaches the oceans from land, through drainage.
Toxic metals reach the ocean and contribute to ocean pollution, destroying reproduction, behavior, growth and the biochemistry of the ocean's marine life.
The plastic debris that reaches the ocean is capable of absorbing the toxic chemicals polluting the water. The sea life that consumes the plastic is then poisoned. Because plastic never completely disappears and breaks down into smaller pieces, it is often seen as food to marine life.
Radioactive waste and industrial waste such as acids and toxins often reach the ocean adding to the pollution and substantial loss of marine life.
The ocean's oxygen content is depleted by the runoff of fertilizer that causes an increase of algae growth.
When little sea creatures consume toxins in their food, they absorb those chemicals. They are then consumed by larger marine animals. The amount of toxins is concentrated in the larger marine animals. This continues up the food chain until the largest sea creatures have such extreme contamination, often millions of times higher than the water itself.
There are dead zones in the oceans that have been created by pollution making life in those zones impossible for marine or plant life.
It is estimated that every square mile of ocean has more than 45,000 pieces of plastic floating in it.


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