Plastic in the Ocean Podcast

ScrAPES#2: Plastic in the Ocean Podcast

June 5, 2015 Episode

The pod casts from Living on Earth: World Sailors Call For Plastic-free Oceans, Testing Boston Harbor for Plastic, and Meeting the Challenge of Plastic Marine Debris all have a common theme. The theme of the three pod casts are about cause and effect of plastics. In podcast one World Sailors Call For Plastic-free Oceans, sailors discuss about how plastic kills animals in oceans because aquatic animals mistaken micro beads for food. Eighty percent of plastics found in the ocean come from land. Even though plastic is useful for health care, reservation, and it reduces energy; it can also live for a really long period of time. Plastics find their way from water ways that eventually leads to the ocean. Obviously, if aquatic animals like fish eats micro beads they will eventually die and if this process keeps going on and we do not do anything about it, fishes and other aquatic animals will go extinct. We will not have food. The ecosystem will not be balanced. In the second pod cast, Testing Boston Harbor for Plastic, Graduate from University of Massachusetts Boston and Master Degree of Marine and Science Technology, Tyler O'Brien, analyzes micro plastics on the Boston Harbor. She goes into the facts that micro plastics are 5 millimeters or smaller found in plastic bags, bottles, and more. Micro plastics ingest small animal's ecosystem. Also, she talks about how plank tons can feed on sixty-three micrometers which effects animals that eat plank tons as well. Micro plastics are broken down to plastic bags, bottles, and wrapping. In Meeting the Challenge of Plastic Marine Debris, Dr. Sandra Whitehouse is a biological oceanographer and Senior Advisor to the Ocean Conservan explores about how eight million plastic per year are being wasted as trash. Dr. Whitehouse also discussed that twenty percent of sea-based action comes from fishing gears, containers, etc; eighty percent comes from land from human activities, fifty percent comes from Asia and South East Asian countries like the Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka.

These pod casts are quite interesting to me because they all comment on the cause and effect of plastic; that plastic creates pollution in the ocean other than land. The fact that the every day material that we find almost everywhere can ruin our environment by killing animals that live in the ocean because they mistaken it for food is a very nerve-racking thing. Before I have heard about how plastic effects badly on our environment, supermarkets like Market Basket or Shaw's would offer their costumers the right whether to buy reusable bags or not, made me think it was a stupid idea. I did not care much about what a little thing like plastic could do to living things like animals and especially us. Now I understand the idea of reducing or eliminating plastic in our communities because we are basically murdering animals in the ocean. Animals do not know the bad things in life. I feel severely pity for them. It is exceedingly important that we reduce as much or if we can eliminate plastic overall because it will cause our environments to begin to be a healthier place. 

This pod cast is important to environmental science because plastic effects our community it is trash that later turns out into pollution then to deaths of animals and other living things. Now it may be pollution in the ocean maybe next it will be air pollution. Animals like fishes, crabs, jellyfish, sharks, etc have a significant part on the world. It is also important because it is human impacting on the environment; they are the one's causing land and ocean pollution by misusing land resources. People should care more about their environment, land and ocean, because one small thing can effect a whole. 

Sources:

• World Sailors Call For Plastic-free Oceans
• Testing Boston Harbor for Plastic
• Meeting the Challenge of Plastic Marine Debris

My Connection to Nature

Nature

Nature is all around us. It is like a drug that suffocates us. Nature includes plants, animals, landscape, features and products of the earth, and it especially includes us. We are part of nature; what we do, whether the positive or negative, affects nature itself. In my personal life, I believe I take part of the good things in nature and also the bad things. Around me I see recycling bins, trash bins, dog bags, etc. I also see improvements to our environment for example new construction sites that later on become new buildings and parks. Helping our society; the poor, hungry, homeless, or helpless also effects nature.

In my environment I often connect with nature by recycling paper and plastics. Also I pick up trash whether it is on the street, public transportation or in a classroom. With that, I do not know whether it is my slight OCD kicking in or not. To be honest I do not know where the recycle goes. Are they being converted into reusable material? Or is it just being placed somewhere in an abandon site? Also I think I can do more for the environment I can help clean places that are dirty or take part on something for a cause. 

Goose Exterminator of the Netherlands Enrages Animal Rights Activists

ScrAPES#1: Goose Exterminator of the Netherlands Enrages Animal Rights Activists 

by Andrew Higgins

June 14, 2015

          Mr. Den Hertog, 40 years of age, is the Netherlands' peerless expert in the theory and practice of killing large animals of wild geese. He recently killed 570 graylag geese in his portable gas chamber which totals the death toll in a weekly basis to 7,000 geese. Dutch authorities pays Mr. Den Hertog to decrease the population of wild geese. Due to a ban of hunting wild geese, their population has increased rapidly due to the farmers' increasing use of nitrogen-rich fertilizer and expansion of protected nature areas.

          This article is most interesting to me because I am an animal lover; the fact that I own four different kind of animals and growing up with mostly dogs and cats, I have adapted to loving and caring for animals. I feel tremendously sad that there are people in this world who would kill animals whether it is due to the increasing population, food, or medical use. Yes, food and maybe medical use is okay. But if you have to kill dogs or cats (which are most likely home pets to almost anyone) for food; for example in China they kidnap dogs and kill them for the Yulin Festival. That is not acceptable. It is sick and incredibly repugnant. This article reminded me of countries who kill animals for food or abuse them. 

          It is quite hilarious how the Dutch authorities allowed Mr. Den Hertog to kill wild geese due to the increase of population because WE humans are over populated as well. There are approximiately more than 7 billion people living on earth. There are fewer than 4 million babies born in the United States each year. How much more in other countries like China or Japan? Yes there are crimes anywhere we go and it will most likely seems like it is a way of decreasing our population but those crimes like murder are chosen by selfish desires, hunger, or mental illnesses. Geese do not have selfish desires or mental illness; they do not choose to kill one another. I doubt they even have hate for one another.


          This article is important to environmental science because it is endangering geese. It also takes part on the equilibrium of the ecosystem. Plants affect animals, vise versa. Geese are consumers who take part on receiving energy by consuming other organisms to form the food chain and balance. I believe that every living things have the right to live no matter how small or big they are.

Source:

• Goose Exterminator of the Netherlands Enrages Animal Rights Activists