Monday 31 January 2011

by Heidi Taylor
Tangaroa Blue Ocean Care Society


In my first contribution to The Newsport's new fortnightly environmental feature, Eco-librium, I'll discuss an issue which should be at the forefront of our minds - marine debris.

We choose to live on the coast to enjoy the magnificent beaches and oceans. But we are killing the very thing we love through our own carelessness. Here are a few damning statistics:

• 46,000 individual pieces of plastic are estimated to float in every square mile of ocean.
• Six million tonnes of rubbish finds its way into the world’s oceans every year.
• Three times as much rubbish is dumped into the world’s oceans annually as the weight of fish caught.

Most people agree that this horrifying amount of marine debris is unsightly, but not everyone is aware of the huge impact that it has on our marine life and seabirds.

77 Australian marine species have been shown to be impacted by marine debris, many of which are killed by this floating rubbish. This includes over twenty Australian endangered species like the Humpback and Blue Whales, Tristan Albatross and Loggerhead Turtles.

Marine debris can cause entanglement, getting caught around necks, flukes, flippers and fins. The plastics and ropes cannot stretch as the animal or bird grows which can cause painful infections, amputations, strangulation and ultimately death.

Even the smallest pieces of plastic and cigarette butts can have fatal results. Seabirds such as albatrosses can pick up these pieces, thinking they are food. They can then be regurgitated to feed their young chicks who cannot digest plastic.

Other marine life, such as turtles, confuse items such as plastic bags for food. The ingestion of plastics can physically block the digestive system, causing pain, internal injuries, suppression of the immune and reproductive systems and death.

Once discarded into the environment, debris can take hundreds of years to break down into a fine plastic powder, forever remaining in the environment. Plastic bottles can take up to 450 years and monofilament fishing line up to 600 years, the cigarette butt, up to 10 years. This gives the marine debris an opportunity to kill time and time again as it remains in the food chain.

So what can one person do to help stop the flow of plastics into our oceans? It all starts with personal choice and everyone can make a difference.

Think about what you personally add to the litter load whether it’s something as small as a cigarette butt or as big as an illegally dumped TV it all adds to the trash – this problem is easily fixed – just put it in a bin instead.

When you visit our beaches, take everything home that you brought with you, and grab any extra rubbish that you see – leave nothing but footprints.

And if you really want to get involved just email tangaroablue@oceancare.org.au and register for one of our monthly beach cleanup events in the area.

Lastly, some best wishes to all those devastated by the floods in south east Queensland, but also a thought to all those poor marine animals now dodging a mammoth load of debris washing into the ocean.

Protect Our Oceans!