Pacific Plastic...

Think back to the last time you were on a boat heading out to go fishing. You had a cooler with two bags of ice, several six packs held together with those plastic loops on top, sandwiches wrapped in plastic wrappers, and as usual you were smoking one after the other...assuming you smoke.

Now think about six hours later, seven fish in the catch tub, two six packs down...two more to go, and no cans on deck. Where did they go? Over the side, of course...along with the empty plastic bags and those plastic loops.

Now multiply that by a million times a day worldwide, times 20 years and you start to see what we have been doing ...just one or two of us at a time...to our oceans. Add to that the plastic bottles and the candy wrappers, the lighters...sun screen tubes...fishing line, kids' toys, beach umbrellas... you name it, we've been throwing it into the lakes, rivers, bays, oceans...

There was a time when the oceans were pristine, but that time is gone. Cities all over the world have been dumping tons of waste into the open ocean for years, so have ships, boats from fishing communities, and of course that stuff we threw into the lakes and rivers...well it flowed down to the oceans and out to sea.

As the picture shows, there are beaches the world over that are covered in trash...cause trash...especially plastic trash doesn't break down. It breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces, it gets eaten by sea life and birds, often killing them, and it prevents the micro-life forms of our seas from developing and starting the food chain process that it is central too.

Samples of ocean waters in the Pacific between California and Japan have shown that 80% of the surface is filled with plastic waste, only 20% is plankton and micro-lifeforms that are needed to feed the inhabitants at the start of the life chain.

How much plastic? MILLIONS of tons! No...Millions of millions of tons...covering surface areas in the Pacific that are twice the size of Texas... Oh, its in the Atlantic too...and the Gulf of Mexico, the Indian Ocean, the Antarctic, and the Arctic. Hell, there are even Russian submarines in the White Sea and the Kara Sea...great thought there.

And it doesn't just kill the small fish, or an occasional bird. It catches a great array of sea life in its mass, fouls whales with drifting nets, entangles everything. The oceans are no longer pristine, haven't been for near 100 years, though it took us another six decades to actually acknowledge it. Can we change it... yes, if we are willing to commit to the task. No plastic bags, no cigarette buts, no plastic bottles over the side. You take it to the boat, you bring it home and recycle it. That's a start...small as it seems...but we have to start somewhere.