Author: Jenny Yao
Editors: Galiba Anjum and Ethan Liu
Artist: Susan Wu
The popular myth that marine protection has nothing to do with “regular” people, could not be more false. The ocean is ⅔ of the earth, and any damage to the ocean causes serious problems not only for the Earth but humans as well. Ever since the industrial revolution in the eighteenth century, people’s explosion of natural resources and the release of abundant carbon dioxide have made the temperature of Earth to levels never thought of in the past. These are all causes of global warming, which severely hurts our ocean ecosystems. If the health of our ocean deteriorates, all our environments follow in its place.
Excessive carbon emissions caused by human activities have largely caused the ocean’s deep acidification crisis. Through the photosynthesis of phytoplankton, the ocean converts atmospheric carbon dioxide into organic carbon. Since the industrial revolution, due to the excessive carbon emissions produced by human activities, the ocean is absorbing more and more carbon dioxide, the alkalinity of the seawater has declined, and it has become more acidic, which will bring a series of linkage problems. According to reports, the current ratio of plastic to plankton in the ocean is as high as 1:2. In other words, plastic waste accounts for half of the marine plankton. In the 361 million square kilometers of the earth's ocean area, which accounts for 71.8% of the earth's surface area, how small the ocean plastic waste is. The report shows that by 2050, plastic in the ocean will be much heavier than fish; 90% of seabirds and more than half of the world’s sea turtles have plastic in their bodies.
What can people do?
1. Try to reduce your daily carbon dioxide consumption.
a. The ocean absorbs carbon dioxide and effectively slows down climate change. A
low-carbon lifestyle not only helps improve global warming, but also slows down
the rate of ocean acidification.
2. Reduce plastic waste.
a. When buying things, avoid using plastic bags; reduce the number of takeouts; decrease the use of plastic products, pay attention to plastic recycling projects, and resolutely resist the use of disposable plastic products. Instead, invest in environmentally friendly, recyclable alternative packaging products, thereby reducing plastic waste discharged into the ocean.
Don’t hesitate to do something to protect the oceans, there is so much we can do and support! Environmental protection is now a trend and more and more attention is paid to it. Therefore, many brands have begun to link their products with environmental protection, using sustainable materials and recycling materials. For example, Adidas x Parley: Parley is a marine conservation organization, and Adidas has cooperated with them to launch marine environmental protection themed products. Merchandises launched this year used plastic water bottles recycled from the ocean which shows that a pair of running shoes can help reduce environmental pollution of about 11 plastic bottles.
Citations:
ZhiHu. “Https://Zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/37349451.” 世界海洋日｜浩瀚如它 也需我们去保护,
2020, zhuanlan.zhihu.com/p/37349451.
ZhiHu. 为什么要保护海洋环境？. 2020,
www.zhihu.com/question/319588740/answer/910572612.