Imagine your swimming in the ocean. Feeling the warm tropical water surrounding you, and the salty breeze pushing softly against your face. You look down and see crystal-clear blue waters with little fish swimming by you. Then suddenly something catches your eye. A garbage bag, and a pop can? That’s not supposed to be in anyone’s perfect memory of the ocean. But that's what everyone around the world is subjected to. Our oceans are becoming more and more polluted each year. If we don’t take action now, our oceans will be too far gone.I will be talking about the state of our oceans and the animals in them, laws in place now, and what we should do to protect our oceans.
 

The world's oceans are heavily polluted, which is hurting everything in the oceanic ecosystem. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website, “approximately 1.4 billion pounds of trash per year enters the ocean.” There is so much garbage in fact, that we have a garbage patch twice the size of Texas in the North Atlantic Ocean. No one would ever think something as simple as the fertilizers you put on your lawn could actually hurt the ocean right? But fertilizer is very common and is very harmful to the ocean even though it is a “natural” thing that people use to grow green grass on their lawns. The harmful thing about fertilizer is that it makes things grow too much. Yep that’s right, it grows too much. It makes more and more algae grow which depletes oxygen and can suffocate all the other plants. Fertilizer is just one of the many pollutants in our ocean. Most of this trash is plastic which is one of the worst for the environment because it can not break down like other materials. However oil is the all time worst for the marine life as it is enters their system more easily and can cover them in oil. When the oil enters their system, it can leave many behavioral effects. One of these effects is breaking down their thermal insulation, the thing that keeps them warm in the cold oceans.

  According to the Conserve Energy Future website, “Over one million seabirds are killed by ocean pollution each year. Three hundred thousand dolphins and porpoises die each year as a result of becoming entangled in discarded fishing nets.” The plastic in the oceans as been there so long that it has broken down into almost microscopic pieces that animals at the bottom of the food chain absorb. Then as those animals are eaten, it works its way up the food chain. After its worked its way into the bigger fish, humans eat the fish. Now don’t think humans are immune to their own pollution, because it always comes back to harm us. According to The Washington Post’s article, “The Bad News is Fish are Eating Plastic and Even Worse, They Might Like It” from September of 2017 by Matthew Savoca, “ Numerous species that are sold for consumption have been found with toxic plastics in their stomachs”. While scientists don’t know all the effects of eating contaminated fish, they know they can’t be good. Many scientists are conducting experiments too try to figure out the effects of contaminated fish in humans.
 

Until the 1970’s, chemicals and garbage were dumped into the ocean on purpose and it became a very common practice. So common in fact that people would even dump pesticides and radioactive waste. They assumed it would dissolve and there wouldn't be a problem at all. They in fact, were very wrong. These things don't just “disappear” after you throw them away. All of this pollution, the garbage, plastic, acids, pesticides, and everything else have been continuously polluting and destroying our oceans for hundreds of years . Those harmful things have lead to a crippled ecosystem, millions of dead sea life, and dirty polluted beaches. It is time for us to take action and clean our oceans before they are too far gone.
     

There are some laws in place now that prevent pollution in our oceans. A few laws or organizations in place today are: The Act to Prevent Pollution from Ships, Marine Debris Research, Prevention, and Reduction Act, and also the Shore Protection Act . The Marine Debris Research Prevention and Reduction Act website, revised on April 18,2018 , describes their mission as “identifying, determining sources of, assessing, reducing, and preventing marine debris.” That sounds like a helpful organization right? An organization that’s never been heard of. That no one knows exists. These laws and groups need to be shown to the people, be advertised. If we don’t bring awareness to this issue nothing will change. When I was doing my research for laws that protect our oceans, I went onto the official United States government website ,with the title “Laws that protect our Oceans” and I found only four laws. The official government website only had four laws that protect our world's oceans.
         

Our entire nation needs to raise our standards and start being productive. Those 1.4 billion pounds of trash dumped into the ocean each year are not going to disappear on their own. We need to set laws in place that protect our oceans. Laws that will clean our oceans more and more every year. There are other smaller organizations that help clean our oceans. One of these organizations is The Ocean Clean Up. They develop new technologies to clean the garbage from these garbage patches. They plan to clean up 50% of the “Great Garbage Patch” in 5 years. We need to encourage more organizations like these, organizations that are doing real action to help our worlds ocean. If we don’t do something now that “perfect memory” of the ocean will never happen. The dolphins, seabirds, and other animals that depend on the ocean need us to take responsibility for how much we have harmed the ocean, their ocean. We need to reduce our common pollutants and bring awareness to organizations that are working to clean our oceans. Because just saying “we are going to clean the oceans” isn’t enough, we need action.