Plastic and Trash fouling our Oceans
Plastics and other trash is polluting the world's oceans to a tragic extent. There is already the Pacific Garbage Patch and now a similar expanse of refuse has been identified in the Atlantic. The Pacific Garbage Patch lies between California and Hawaii.
The floating Atlantic Ocean garbage was documented by two groups of scientists who trawled the sea between scenic Bermuda and Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores islands. The debris is harmful for fish, sea mammals, and at the top of the food chain, potentially humans, even though much of the plastic has broken into such tiny pieces they are nearly invisible.
"We found the great Atlantic garbage patch," said Anna Cummins, who collected plastic samples on a sailing voyage in February. "Our job now is to let people know that plastic ocean pollution is a global problem, it unfortunately is not confined to a single patch,"
Long trails of seaweed, mixed with bottles, crates and other flotsam, drift in the still waters of the area, known as the North Atlantic Subtropical Convergence Zone. Cummins' team even netted a Trigger fish trapped alive inside a plastic bucket.
Unfortunately, there is no easy answer in sight. Plastics will continue to be consumed in mass and thus thrown away in mass. We must try to cut down on our use of plastics where possible and recycle at every chance.
Could we finally have an answer for the deaths of so many of our important bees? Colony Collapse Disorder has puzzled researchers for years as bee colonies died off across the United States.
The US Department of Agriculture has pledged $50 million to a program designed to restore seven troubled river basins from stretching from Florida to Texas.
The Exxon Mobil pipeline that runs under the waterway near Billings failed July 1 and the resulting oil spill has hurt local wildflife.
Brazil has set up a crisis center to combat increased deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, the nation's environmental minister said Wednesday
One year on, oil from the largest spill in US history clogs wetlands, pollutes the ocean and endangers wildlife.