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Recent studies indicate that our ocean is becoming to polluted with plastic that makes its way into the ocean from our shores. In some parts of the ocean there is six times more plastic then zooplankton.

How You Can Help

Send an email to the governor urging him to support legislation that will protect our oceans from pollution.

Brief Summary

New research has highlighted the dangers caused by plastic pollution in our ocean.  Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1 million sea creatures every year. The number of marine mammals that die each year due to ingestion of and entanglement in plastic approaches 100,000 in the North Pacific Ocean alone.

Plastic is all around us, from the grorcery bags we use to the bottle top on a soda pop, and it doesn’t disappear when we can’t see it. Most of the plastic products we use are ending up in our oceans.  The plastic that finds its way into the ocean is not just a problem for the millions of sea creatures that are strangled or killed by it, it is also a problem for humans. Recent studies have shown that there are now six times more plastic in some parts of the ocean than there is zooplankton -- the base of life in the aquatic food chain.

According to the nonprofit Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, California, tens of thousands of mammals and birds swallow plastic each year. The plastic is dumped from countries worldwide, lost by ships or washed out to sea from urban areas. Furthermore, plastic becomes a "toxic sponge," soaking up pollutants in the water. Charles Moore, founder of Algalita Marine Research Foundation, says the ultimate concern is that humans could wind up consuming the plastic – and its absorbed pollutants – as it makes its way up the food chain.

Plastic like Styrofoam doesn't biodegrade, it just gets broken into smaller pieces.  Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and marine debris expert in Seattle, says one pound of plastic turns into 100,000 small pieces of plastic if left in the ocean.  Jellyfish then consume these tiny plastic particles, mistaking it for zooplankton, and the toxic substance begins to work its way up the food chain.. In addition to substituting for actual nutrients, plastic also chemically attracts hydrocarbon pollutants found in the ocean like PCBs and DDT. Moore says pollutants accumulate up to 1 million times more in plastic than in ocean water.

In order to solver this crisis we need to take steps now to reduce the amount of plastic going into the ocean.  We can do this by banning polystyrene, tracking and handling plastics more carefully and switching to biodegradable packaging.

Last year the legislature passed and the Governor signed AB 258 (Krekorian) a bill that will work to reduce plastic pollution going into our oceans. But more action is needed this year.