Why Keep the Oceans Clean?                    


         The relationship of the Oceans to Planet Earth is the same as Man’s lungs are to life.  Just as our lungs purify our blood, the oceans absorb massive quantities of pollutants, not only from the air, but from the land as run-off from rainfall.  And, just as, if Man’s lungs fail, death is imminent, so too will our Planet die if the oceans cease to perform their critical cleansing-action. 

  People who live far from the sea may not realize how important those great bodies of water are to their daily lives and that their garbage more often than not ends up traveling to the sea.  Even the multitudes who live at the beach or visit it often, still tend to forget what an important “life-asset” the ocean is.  For all of us, climate change begins with the oceans; that’s where the sun creates evaporation and generates humidity which leads to life-giving rain everywhere which eventually returns to the sea.  

         Wind-blown trash can travel miles on land but once it reaches the sea, tides and currents may carry it thousands of miles to the natural ocean-vortex not too far from Hawaii in the North Pacific.  There, where the currents converge and swirl, the floating trash cannot escape.  At present, in that location, there exists a bouyant, sub-surface "island" of non-biodegradable, consumer-waste hundreds of miles in diameter. Oceanographers call it The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.       

          In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, to the east of Bermuda, is another vortex area of similar size − The Sargasso Sea − which is also progressively accumulating floating plastic waste.  It’s estimated that combined, the Sargasso Sea and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are currently choking with more than two hundred million tons of plastic waste. 

      That's 200,000,000 tons!   



         Even though the plastic breaks down over time and eventually becomes plankton-sized pieces, they retain their poisonous properties and inevitably make their way into the food chain from which we humans eat.  Because those contaminants and poisons are ingested and absorbed by the maritime creatures, they eventually pass it back to Man.  As the oceans become choked with inorganic waste and laced with polluting poisons, the food-supply derived from the sea and consumed by Man, must dwindle and eventually fail.  Thousands of sea-creatures under and around both the Garbage Patch and the Sargasso Sea, incapable of distinguishing between "food" and the indigestible and poisonous bits of non-biodegradable plastic, die there every year.

          In all of the oceans and seas around the world, sea-life, such as turtles, manta rays, whales, dolphins and fish of all kinds are increasingly becoming victims of plastic garbage from netting and beer six-pack carriers which strangle, Styrofoam cups and plates, super-market bags, plastic wrap and soda bottles that choke and poison.  

          Lung cancer in Man leads to death and those massive Trash Islands are the tumors bought on by the "ocean cancer" in our Planet.  Each bottle you throw away, every little piece of trash not disposed of correctly, contributes to the planetary infirmity.  We all need to become more conscious of our waste-disposal habits and take corrective action.          

         Reduce, Re-use and Re-cycle !

                   Just because most of us will never get to visit those vast and sluggish whirlpools that are the Garbage Patch and the Sargasso Sea, or may never even learn of their existence doesn’t mean that one day the problem will simply go away.  For millions of years, the Oceans have done an amazing job of recycling the Earth’s bio-degradable waste, but in less than two hundred years, Man's mindless abuse has turned the Oceans into a cesspool!  The oceans cannot heal themselves against Man’s perpetual onslaught of polluting waste.   

         Does anyone really believe that the oceans can "absorb" garbage endlessly?

 Shouldn’t such an important and valuable asset be treated with care and respect?  Or, is it because it’s free and so seemingly vast, we assume it can take care of itself?          

                  Planet Earth is in serious need of Emergency Room help!  

         While a large proportion of beach trash floats in on a tide, at least half of what’s collected from beaches is generated locally.  And, thirty percent of the locally generated trash is exclusively cigarette butts and packets.