Humans interact with our in environment in many ways ... some beneficial but mos

Question

Humans interact with our in environment in many ways ... some beneficial but most are detrimental to the health of our planet. The deteriorating condition of the 70% of the Earth covered by water is of increasing concern. Humans long believed (or wanted to believe) that the immensity of the oceans was sufficient to absorb any degradation. However, there is mounting and incontrovertible evidence that this is just not true. Today, we observe rising ocean mean temperatures, fish population depletions, coral bleaching, dead zones, and oil spills. However, the most evocative problem may be the "Great" Garbage Patches found in most of our oceans (not just the Pacific).

Watch the videos found at the link below:

Great Garbage Patch 1

Great Garbage Patch 2

Great Garbage Patch 3

1) Where does all the trash come from?

2) How do the garbage patches form?

3) How are they affecting overall ocean health and its wildlife?

4) Why don't we just clean them up?

5) How can each of us help?

Explanation / Answer

1)

The source of the trash or marine debris are catogorised as follows

a) From lands - Plastic trashes and chemical effluents of the factories near the sea and the rivers (discharging its water into sea), ports, docks, marinas, harbours, storm drains, from these the debris are cdeposited at the gyres in the form of the pelagic plastics by the drifting nature of the oceanic currents.

b) From ocean - By the Fishing vessels ( fishing hook , nets, buoys), stationary plateforms and the cargos, these discharges the wastes sometimes directly of mostly indirectly into the oceans.

2)

These patches are formed due to the drifting effects of the oceanic currents, thses currents are suffucient enough to transfer the plastic particle from the shore to the mid ocreans where there is the center of the rotations of the gyres this is done due to the effects of the coriolis force, earths rotation etc, The wastes of the USA and the Japan are transferred or drifted by the strong currents of the north Pacific ocean and thus drifted the wastes to the North Pacific Ocean Gyre where it started rotating along with the earlier deposited plastics and formed the pelagic zone of plastics.

3)

Oceans healths are affected by 3 ways

a) Direct harm to species = Affected sea turtles and the albatross, deteriorated and infected their digestive system due to its consumption,one third of their chicks have died due being fed plastics by their parents.

b) Indirect harm to species = The debris of the plastics absorbs the organic pollutants DDTs, PAHs which were taken by the jellyfish which was further taken by the big fishes and then ultimately by the humans which results in the toxic infections or diseases to all ( jellyfish, larger fish, humans).

c) Spreading invasive species = Sometimes the invasive species get stucked on these plastics and then transferred to the new region there they started affecting the other species.

4)

We are not able to clean them out because

a) High cost operation

b) Uneven distribution of plastics

c) Very small sige of plastics or wastes ( plastics are as small as 5mm diameter)

d) Inappropriate technologies to clean them out

e) Continuety of the deposition of these debris

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