2020

Impacts of Plastic Pollution on Marine

Life

Syeda Samrah Shazmeen

Ned University of Engineering and
Technology
1/1/2020
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Plastic Pollution:
Plastic pollution is a detrimental build-up plastic debris that affects negatively on the wildlife and marine
environment. Plastic is a polymeric compound made up of infinite interconnected links and are likely to
persist in the environment forever becoming the source of lethal nature.

Types of Plastic Pollutant Based on Size:

There are three categories of plastic pollutants on the basis of size that are microplastics, mesoplastics and
macroplastics.

Plastic Pollutants intervention from Land into the Sea:

A research was published in the journal Science in February 2015, conducted by UC Santa Barbara’s
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), which showed plastic polluter’s amount
that are introduced by land into oceans. The results of the study identified that about 8 million metric tons
enter annually into the marine environment. It equals 5 grocery bags comprised of plastic for every foot of
coastline around the globe. Till next five years, It is estimated that the annual intervention of plastic into sea
is likely to be doubled making it equal to the ten bags of plastic per foot of coastline. Hence, the cumulative
input for 2025 would be around 20 times the 8 million metric tons approximate equaling to almost 100 bags
of plastic per foot of coastline in the world.

Figure 1 Plastic waste accumulation on beach

Sources of Marine debris:

The main sources of marine debris are land and sea discharges. It is estimated that:

• Land-based sources- contributes about 80% into the ocean in the form of
trash and urban runoff which includes waste from construction, landfills, solid
waste from industries and garbage containers.
• Ocean-based sources- partakes 20% into the marine pollution including sea
discharges and discarded fishing nets.

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Plastic Waste in Surface oceans:
The surface ocean is overwhelmed by micro plastics which sinks in depth of oceans to negatively impact
fishes and sea mammal. The research by Lebreton, Egger and Slat denied the previous hypotheses that
plastics in the surface ocean have short life span.
Contrary to which it showed that even if we cut plastic pollution to zero the already existing polluter
will
remain in our surface oceans in future
decades.
Study showed model of three scenarios consisting:

• Plastic emission cut-off by this year

• Plastic emission increases till 2020 and then decrease  Plastic emission
continue to increase till next thirty years.

Figure 2 Source: A global mass budget for buoyant microplastics waste in the ocean (leberton et.al 2019). Nature Scientific
Reports.

The results inferred that we must need to improve poor waste management and cut off the plastic
pollutants entering into the sea from the source.

Impacts of Plastic Pollution in Marine life:

Marine life faces deadly negative impacts and severe threats of life insecurity. The major fatalities include
ingestion, entanglement, starvation, infection and suffocation. According to the report published by
United Nation, around 800 species are affected by marine litter. The figures below depict the injurious
effects on marine species.

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 Fig 3. A blue-striped grunt fish entangled in plastic strip in the Caribbean Sea.

Fig 4. A dolphin with a plastic bag trailing from its fin swimming in Brazil.

Fig 5. An albatross found dead due to ingestion of plastic detritus in the Pacific Ocean

Direct impacts on the marine lineage:

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The foremost explicit consequences of plastic deterioration are the confinement of animals in nets or large
detritus. It is a spur of substantial mortality of marine species, fishes, turtles, and birds. An additional
immediate outcome is an ingestion, which upsets the entire food chain of the aquatic environment.

Impact comparison study of numerous categories of marine litter

According to a study on impact comparison of numerous categories of marine wastage, there were
significant distinctions among detritus varieties in stringency for entanglement, fishing pertinent
elements (buoys, rope, nets, monofilament) stood to be most adverse, on the interaction of marine litter
and marine lineage .Nonetheless, near behind these three elements prevailed plastic bags and balloons.
In difference, there was tinier distinction among commodities in the anticipated consequences of
ingestion on varmints. Plastic bags and balloons were required to have the tremendous ingestion effect,
accompanied by monofilament cord and plastic equipment. Contamination outcomes were fairly high
for cigarette stubs, tough plastic jars, and nourishment utensils. Also, there were few distinctions across
contamination in articles compared with entanglement stringency.

Fig. 6. Comparative harshness of numerous categories of marine litter.

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References
https://www.azocleantech.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=729

Annual Review of Marine Science Vol. 9:205-229 (Volume publication date January
2017)
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution

ICES Journal of Marine Science, Volume 73, Issue 2, January/February 2016

Palmisano & Pettigrew -1992