These are some of the interesting items related to marine biology with some interest.
Image Source: Creative Commons — Attribution 2.0 Generic — CC BY 2.0
This is a diagram of the great pacific garbage patch with an example of Germany to scale. The garbage patch is located in the Northern Pacific Ocean near the coast of California. Due to the current of the ocean, there are two garbage patches formed in the Pacific Ocean. These patches are caused by the ocean currents, specifically the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence zone. This image focuses on the eastern patch. The circular motion of the current draws debris into the center, where the debris are trapped and collect together. This current means that a plastic bottle that blew into the ocean from a beach in California can end up in a garbage patch the size of a country near Japan. The main issue with these patches is that even if we stopped all plastic production today, the patches would not quickly break down. These patches are comprised of mostly plastic which only break into smaller pieces but are never completely removed. The amount of plastic currently in the ocean has already led to microplastics being found in human food. All of this information leads to 1) plastic is a harmful product that is routinely wasted in mass, and 2) Our current waste systems are not currently capable of keeping waste out of the ocean.
Image Source: Arroyo to handle runoff from Salinas fields | Openverse
This picture is of a simple farm with edges that taper off into a small divot of collected water with wild plants on the other side. This is a very common setup for most farms. Another extremely common item found on these plots of farmland are pesticides. Pesticides are a very item that help keep away weeds and unwanted pests that may damage plant. Between pesticides and plants that are grown specifically to survive more easily, we have a very high yield of crops. Although pesticides are vital to our current methods of crop production, they can have a detrimental effect when swept away by water. This is an issue when crops are watered or when it rains. The water carries pesticides to collects and usually end up in groundwater, making it unsafe to drink. This is an extreme issue when about half of the country drinks tap water. Pesticides can also enter streams and rivers, negatively affecting all of the wildlife that live there. This in turn creates a cycle where people may end up eating fish that are not safe to consume. Between marine health and human health, pesticides can cause a lot of harm. Because of their delayed effects, since it takes time for pesticides to seep into groundwater and rivers, the effects are less immediate but become nearly unstoppable one they begin to show. To note, about one billion pounds of pesticides are applied throughout the United States each year. Because pesticides are so common and necessary, we need to come up with a more sustainable solution to limit seeping of pesticides into groundwater as well as rivers, streams, and eventually the ocean.
Image Source: Deepwater Horizon Offshore Drilling Platform on Fire | Openverse
This is a picture of the Deepwater Horizon incident. The Deepwater Horizon was an oil rig operated in the Gulf of Mexico by the offshore-oil-drilling company Transocean and leased by BP . The incident began on April 20th, 2010. On this date, a surge of natural gas destroyed a concrete core installed to seal the well for later use. After that, the natural gas made its way up to the oil rig at the surface before igniting. 11 were killed and 17 were injured from this. The entire oil rig was lost to the ocean, where at a peak, was leaking 60,000 barrels of oil per day. 57,500 square miles of the gold of Mexico was covered in oil from this leak. The spill lasted for 87 days spilling between 3.1 and 4.9 million barrels of oil into the ocean. This is still the largest oil spill to this day and killed an estimated 105,000 sea birds as well as 150,000 sea turtles and possibly half of the dolphin population in the area. BP was fined $4.5 billion for the spill. Billions were required to collect all of the oil and recover the ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico. The sheer impact that this one spill had, not only on the economy of the surrounding area, but the environment stability of the gulf is nearly impossible to know. The ecosystem of the Gulf of Mexico is still recovering from this spill, and it will take a long time to understant just how truly detrimental this oil spill was.
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rubber_duckies_So_many_ducks.jpg
author: gaetanlee, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
This is a picture of a bunch of yellow rubber duckies. Nothing conspicuous here, right? Well, it may not be conspicuous, but it is an interesting story. In 1992, south of the Alaskan Aleutian Islands, the Evergreen container ship (related to the ever given) lost 12 containers during a storm. One container was filled with about 28,000 rubber ducks. Now while this is bad to introduce 28,000 rubber ducks’ worth of plastic into the ocean, there is something more notable about this situation. These ducks were able to escape the container and began adrift in the middle of the Northern Pacific Ocean. Eventually, they endded up at beaches all over the northern and even other parts of the pacific. Some places include Alaska, Washington, and Japan. This accidental spill was very useful for gathering information about how the currents of not only the pacific, but the entire world’s oceans worked. This spill gathered thousands of points of data because they knew the time and place that the ducks were dropped so they could learn a lot about the currents from the ducks that were recovered. Usually, these current tracking activities are not so big so as to limit pollution, but since the ducks were such a stable and reliably tracked item, it was very useful for tracking ocean currents.
Source: Amazing Great Barrier Reef | Helicopter ride over the Great … | Flickr by Studio Sara Lou
This is a picture of the Great Barrier Reef, located Northeast off the coast of Australia. A coral reef acts as a nursery as well as a holding ground for a large amount of biodiversity. These coral reefs are very important for the environment. The great barrier reef is 1429 miles long and home to over 9,000 species. While the reef is a very popular tourist attraction, it is even more important in biodiversity. These reefs are very susceptible to outside interference. While coral and algae have adapted to a symbiotic relationship in normal circumstances, changes in water temperature around the reef have caused issues between the two. About a third of the entire reef has been affected by this already as the two repel each other., causing the coral to turn white. Other than climate change, pollution and climate change also have a hugely negative impact on biodiversity. Reefs like this exist all around the world, some even being artificial, and all of them are at risk because of multiple human causes. Without proper intervention, these reefs will become more damaged and likely unrecoverable if we do not act swiftly enough. Although humans have a bad impact on coral reefs, starfish can also have a negative impact because of their taste for coral. These reefs are very importance both to biodiversity and ocean stability and must be protected.