Nowadays, the population of people is increasing and the amount of trash has increased, so plastics sometimes go to the sea instead of the land field. Where do the plastics from the sea gather and what problems do they cause?
The plastic island is made up of garbage dumped in the ocean all over the world under the influence of the wind. The reason the plastic island was created was because of the frequent long-distance travel caused by globalization, which resulted in increased waste emissions from ships. According to a recent study, the size of the Korean Peninsula has increased rapidly, which is seven times the size of the Korean Peninsula. It's 15 times the size of Korea.
The biggest issue is the disturb of the ecosystem. According to the ‘Center for biological diversity’(par5) “The fossil fuel industry plans to increase plastic production by 40 percent over the next decade.” The decomposers can’t decompose the plastics since they are not natured things, they are decomposed by the sunlight and gets a physical impact and become into small fragments. These small fragments which are called microplastic are sometimes taken as food for the marine animals. When fish eat microplastic by mistake with plankton and small crustacean, they leave the microplastic in their bodies and will be eaten by larger predators. Eventually, we will catch them for food. Then we will eat delicious microplastic fish. Not just fish other animals are in danger. There was news about a sea turtle with a straw stuck in it, a bird who ate a plastic, 115 plastic cups in a dead whale, and a turtle that misunderstood a plastic bag as a jellyfish. The research shows that 90% of the birds in the ocean have plastics in their bodies. Youngjun Kim the director of the animal hospital national institute of ecology said that turtles can’t throw up the things they ate. Plastics go inside the intestine and cause peritonitis or rupture their intestine. In addition, plastics can cause problems by restraining the bodies of marine animals from moving or cause deformation of their bodies. That means these days, marine animals are exposed to plastic. Fine plastics were also detected in the rivers and they came to the water treatment system. According to the Times, 83% of tap water in the world was found to contain microplastics. It also said that the bottle of drinking water had microplastics. It is directly affecting us as well as underwater fish.
To curtail this problem, we should reduce the use of plastics and recycle plastics. Also, we can have an innovation that allows the ocean to clean up its garbage.