Humans have always been the cause of the harmful chemicals that can be found in the oceans. One of the major causes of ocean trash is ocean mining, which drills for gold, copper, silver, cobalt and zinc, which are located three and a half thousand meters down in the ocean. (conserve-energy-future.com) Land runoff is another big cause, land runoff is the spreading of ocean trash by water which by melting or flooding, flows over the ground while picking up man-made harmful objects. The toxic waste of one area, such as the United States and now Asia, where industrialized development and spreading of poisonous substances have been growing a lot recently, have now become the toxic problems for the rest of the world. Pollution is one of the problems to ocean trash since it can enter the ocean directly. Polluting or sewage substances flow through sewage, rivers, or drainages and flows straight into the ocean. By following the rivers and drainages, minerals from mining camps can find their way directly into the ocean. Another problem which is very common and that many people do is littering the ocean, by basically throwing their trash straight into the ocean. However this can also occur unintentionally by wind currents picking up harmful objects on land, and then blown into the ocean. Animals believe that it might be food and start to eat the harmful toxic things that comes into the …show more content…
Because of the food chain, which is the circle where larger animals eat the smaller animals, the toxins in their bodies spread very easily. It starts off with smaller fishes consuming plankton which have been infected with toxins, the smaller fishes will then be eating by the larger fishes, and the circle will continue. Eventually the toxins will reach the humans, who eats the fishes in the higher in the food chain. The ocean trash and toxins, have also lead to animals getting wick with diseases such as cancer. In Washington’s Olympic peninsula, a 22 year old killer whale was found dead because of the toxic waste. “Her PCB level was so high, technically the carcass was toxic waste.” (Bob Bohle, bluevoice.org) By the spreading of toxins in the ocean, it will also increase the reduction of oxygen levels, and will badly effect the quality of the sea water. “When oxygen levels go down, the chances of survival of marine animals like whales, turtles, sharks, dolphins, penguins for long time also goes down”. (Bob Bohle, bluevoice.org) A lot of animals in the ocean have also been killed because of the rising temperatures when toxic liquids have been dumped in the ocean, this is known as thermal pollution. And of course, one of the largest effects on animals are the large oil spills, which suffocates the animals to death. The oil is also extremely difficult to clean up and has become one of the largest problems when it comes to