Plastics in the Oceans: 

6 Pounds of Plastic per 1 Pound of Biomass 

Anonymous Observer 28mar01

Hello My Friends,

I went to a program about whales and the effects we are having on them in their environment. One of the speakers was a scientist who was studying the problems that plastics are causing. One of his projects was to take water samples and measure how much plastic was in the open ocean.

He went out about 200 kilometers off the coast of Washington State and hauled a net with a very fine mesh behind his boat. The mesh was designed to capture the smallest critters that the birds and whales feed on, probably animals the size of a grain of rice. He found that for every one pound of bio-mass (living organisms) there were 6 POUNDS of plastic!

The plastic does not go away over time, it just breaks down into smaller and smaller bits. The animals mistake these particles for eggs and ingest them, until their systems become so clogged that they die. All the plastic we have made is still with us, we may not see it, but it is all around us. Please do all you can to reduce the use of plastics, and tell others about this very serious problem.