Thesis Statement
: Plastic wastes in the sea will cause negative
effects for fish because their habitat get damaged, the fish get poisoned, and
will be in extinction
A. Their Habitat Get
Damaged
-
Ruining Coral Reefs
-
Damaging sea water
B. The Fish Get
Poisoned
-
Chemical Substances
-
Damaged Digestive System
C. The Fish Will Be
In Extinction
-
Number of fish get killed
Hayu Lesya Putri
HI – 4
PLASTICS SOUP
Introduction
“We’ve become a plastic
society”, a quote from Bill Janklow, a member of The U.S House of
Representatives from South Dakota. It means everybody uses plastic in his/her
daily lifes with low insight of it. Our meals, drinks, and another daily stuffs
are wrapped by plastics. Unfortunately, the plastics will end up as trashes
after we don’t use them anymore. The jargon says, “Don’t be a litterbug!” is
not a nice suggestion anymore since it
still poses another problem. Most of the plastic wastes are end up in the ocean
with some ways, such as wind and water. It is the best media because plastic is
light and able to float. Meanwhile, Earth consists of 80% of water, there are
huge oceans where the plastics will end up in and have a big possibilities on ruining
the marine ecosistem including coral reefs, sea water, and some organisms like
fish. Moreover, plastic wastes in the sea
cause negative effects for fish because their habitat get damaged, the
fish get poisoned, and the fish will be in extinction.
Body Paragraph
There
are a lot of various kinds of fish that live behind the coral reefs. Coral reef
is made up with plant, fish, and many other creatures. It is a home for about
25% of all marine life. We can say if it is a “rainforest of the ocean”.
However, lots of small fishes that live behind the coral reefs die because of
plastic wastes which damaged the coral reefs, it can block plants from getting
light and interupt the growth of it. Based on the data, only 5.2% of coral
reefs in Indonesia are in a good condition. In other words, coral reefs are a
very fragile ecosystem that really sensitive with marine pollution. Besides
that, the damages of coral reefs are also influenced by the water sea pollution
since water are the best media which send the litters enter into the ocean. Water
quality gets worse as litter releases poisons and chemical substances. Actually,
plastics are made by some non bio-degradable substances and contain chemical
polymer that cannot be broken by microorganisms in a biodegradation process so
that plastics are persistent objects. They need hundred years to be decomposed
after being separated into tiny pieces, and spread across the ocean but they
are not brokendown. Marine ecosystem can get sick from living with the dirty
water. In the end, sea water becomes the major of habitat damaging.
Not only up
there, the old plastic wastes which are not destroyed yet will decompose into tiny
pieces. It may possible for getting eaten by fish which eat plankton or another
microorganisms because of the similar form. If they accidentally eat those, it
will stay inside forever since fish’s digestive system are unable to permeate
the plastics and damage its digestive until the fish dies, getting putrefied,
and the tiny parts of plastics get back to the sea and spread away.
Furthermore, plastics are unsafe since they are made by Benzene and Zinc which
cannot be digested by the fish. Moreover, they are also made by Bisphenol A
(BPA) and Phthalates (DOP) where if both matters enter into the body of
organism, they will ruin the endocrine system and being a pollutan inside while
it causes the damaging of endocrine functions such as hormone metabolism
disorders, hormone transport disorders, etc. According to research in Minamata
and Nigata, Japan, it has known that there was mercury pollution in 1953
through 1968 came from industrial plastic wastes which were using mercury
chloride catalyst. It influenced the levels of mercury in fish’s bodies. In the
same case, National Marine Institute (LIPI) has found that the level of mercury
in Teluk Jakarta reached 0.027ppm, it is four times from the level of mercury
in Japan’s cases. Thereby, those substances cannot be released with the fish’s
urine. In the end, those plastics will wait for the death of that fish before
it returns to sea.
Unfortunately,
the amount of plastic wastes are bigger than the total population of marine
organisms. Greenpeace, a global environmental organisation in Amsterdam, has
reported about at least 267 species of marine animals have suffered consuming
marine plastic wastes. It was predicted if 100.000 marine mammals are
threatened by the plastic wastes every year because of 90% of all marine wastes
are plastics. On the other hand, every year, people using 700.000 plastics and
80% of those are sent to the ocean without recycled. These conditions get worse
because some countries have no concern about the danger of using plastics for
oceans except the developed countries, where developing countries have a big
percentage of population growth. It may lead to the increasing of stores or
industries that using plastics for their costumers to bring their buys. In
fact, it has predicted that the total amount of plastic wastes in the ocean are
about one hundred million metric tons. Those will lead the fish living to be in
danger with extinction.
Conclusion
In summary, the problem
of plastic wastes in the ocean are already widespread. Every country should
know about all aspects of marine are important for the existence of fish. The
most important thing we need to concerned about is controlling the use of
plastics. It is not too late to deal with our plastics. Try to reduce and
recycle what we have used. We must change your mindset about “using plastics is
the only way out”. We can work with our imagination, creation, and a little
science to invent something that can replace plastics, or we can change plastic
wastes into some valuable things as has been taught in some schools. It might
be better if we can invent a new material mixture of substances that can change
the non-biodegradable substances in plastics so it can be decomposed easily. At
least, we can stop using plastic, be more respect with environment, and have a
new lifestyle. Remember, big thing starts from a small thing. When these actions
are done by people in all over the world, can you imagine how many fish that
you have saved from extinction?
REFERENCES
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