Ocean Plastic Polluting Global Food Chain

The amount of plastic floating in the ocean has long been an obvious sign of how poorly mankind has treated the fragile ecosystem of the planet. However, recently researchers have made a rather troubling discovery: nearly all of the plastic that should be in the ocean is missing. While this might initially seem like good news, when you stop to consider where this plastic is likely ending up it becomes a much bigger concern. Plastic doesn’t simply disappear, in fact it is a substance that can take years to slowly break down. Plastic also floats which means that it is not simply sinking to the bottom of the ocean. This means that the only plausible explanation for the massive amount of missing ocean plastic is that it is being eaten by wildlife and polluting the global food chain.

Since plastic was never meant to be eaten, and contains substances that can be toxic, this should be setting off major alarms for everyone. This is not simply a problem for environmentalists, it is a problem for all of us. The plastic being introduced into the food chain in the ocean is something that will have profound, and largely unknown effects upon all of us in the future.

The reason that we know that ocean plastic is disappearing is due to researchers finding a much lower density than expected when they were looking for it. After using nets to capture floating ocean plastic, researchers were surprised to find that about 99 percent of what they should be finding was missing. It quickly became apparent that fish and other marine-based animals had to be eating the plastic. The reason this should be a major concern is that the ocean forms the basis for the global food chain. If fish are eating plastic, and you eat fish, then you are now being exposed to the same harmful substances that the fish were eating. Even if you do not eat fish you are still going to be impacted by this since at some point or another something that you eat has eaten some type of ocean based animal.

Since we do not know what type of an impact introducing plastic into the food chain will have, it is important that we treat it as a major concern. Research needs to begin on the impact these chemicals will have on the food chain. More importantly, a means of slowing down the amount of plastic we deposit into the ocean needs to be developed. While stopping pollution is next to impossible, slowing down the damage should at least be a priority until we know exactly what our actions are causing.

Plastic is made from a wide variety of chemicals that do not naturally occur, and could end up having a major impact upon the ecosystem. Unfortunately, the common mentality held by society is that someone else will eventually end up fixing problems that seem to be too big for us to tackle as individuals. The problem with this approach is that it relies upon the logic that a problem can eventually be fixed. What happens if years from now we discover that the ocean plastic currently being eaten by sea life has done irreparable harm to the global food chain? Solving the ocean plastic problem will not be easy, but the consequences of continued inaction could end up causing a major disaster in the future.