Most people know that conserving the ocean is important, but they don’t know how to help. Really, there are a lot of ways to help, but some are a lot harder than others. Not littering is pretty easy. Giving up straws is quite hard, but really helps.
But let’s just focus on the easy ones for now.
Not littering can have a huge positive impact on the oceans. See, even if you live very far away from the water, your trash still has a good chance to end up in the ocean. Let’s say you drop a plastic bag on the ground. The wind will carry that plastic bag for a very long time and throw it into the ocean. Then the bag will be picked up by the tide and this is what can happen:
One simple way to really help the environment is to eat sustainable seafood. An easy way to do this is to look at the sustainable seafood chart. By following the advice on this chart, you are ensuring that all seafood that you eat is caught from areas that have enough of this species.
neil banas via Compfight
In my family, we decided to give up using straws and it is much harder than we thought. For one thing, waiters automatically put a straw in your drink at a restaurant. So, we have had to train ourselves to say, “No straws, please.” Unfortunately, since waiters prepare hundreds of drinks with straws, they sometimes forget our requests. A lot of the waiters look at us like we are weird. What they don’t realize is that straws end up in the oceans and due tremendous harm to animals. Turtles seem especially vulnerable.
I hope that you now know some good ways to limit your impact on the ocean, and consider changing your lifestyle. And know that every little bit is a bit that really helps.
I think this is a very educational story. I like how you showed the graph and what happens when you litter. I think it is good that your’e trying to give up straws. Sometimes when i’m at the beach on vacation I see bottles and trash. Thanks to you i’m going to try to use less straws now. I will tell other people about what this story told me.
Dear Zach
You had a great blog. I liked how you added a graph and the effect of what what happens if you do litter.