How does Rubbish Affect Marine Life?

How does rubbish affect marine life?

In NZ there are hundreds and hundreds of people dropping plastic rubbish and they seem to not know or not care where the rubbish leads to and what happens to it. All rubbish goes down drains and drains leads to the ocean...

People drop rubbish on the ground either if it’s accidental or on purpose. It gets caught by the wind and goes out to the sea! Or it gets down the stormwater drains and then goes to the sea. When it gets to the ocean it floats on the surface on the water and then sea creatures think its food for them to eat! 100,000 sea animals die each year. All the leftover rubbish that is floating gets caught in gyres and most of the plastic goes to north of Hawai’i. There is this type of plastic that is THE WORST it is called ‘nurdles’ They are 3.33 millimeter plastic things and are the base of most plastic products.  Fish eats the plastic and also goes up the food chain. Environmentalists and Scientists say that the oil from the plastic and from the fish act like magnets, even if we don’t eat the stomach of the fish you eat the meat and the stomach and the meat attract each other so the meat has the dirty, disgusting oil.Things like bottle tops, plastic containers, plastic bottles get photo-degraded which means it gets broken down by the sun and turns into 10,000,000 small pieces of plastic. Or Bio-degrade which means it breaks down naturally.  Later on a little fish will eat the plastic and a bigger fish will eat the small fish so on and so on. At the end the biggest fish gets all the plastic from the other fishes and you might not know the fish could end up on your dinner plate. That there is called Bio-accumulate, it around and around the food chain. If we keep doing this we will have no more beautiful blue beaches,seas and no more fishing for fresh fish anymore because all the fish would’ve probably died.  No one would go to the beach and do fun fun things.  NZ is known for our beaches, tourists won’t come and visit NZ and our population will go down and probably NZ, sea creatures and even birds will become extinct. 100,000 sea mammals die each year! You can help by reducing the amount of plastic rubbish and when you see a piece of rubbish don’t just walk past it pick it up! A little can do ALOT! Be awesome and do everything you can to help the ocean!

By: Catherine