Marine
Marine debris applies to floating garbage such as bottles, cans, styrofoam, cruise ship waste, offshore oil and gas exploration and production facilities pollution, and fishing paraphernalia from professional and recreational boaters. Marine debris is also called litter or flotsam and jetsam. Objects that can constitute marine debris include used automobile tires, detergent bottles, medical wastes, discarded fishing line and nets, soda cans, and bilge waste solids.
In addition to being unsightly, it can pose a serious threat to marine life, boats, swimmers, divers, and others. For example, each year millions of seabirds, sea turtles, fish, and marine mammals become entangled in marine debris, or ingest plastics which they have mistaken for food. As many as 30,000 northern fur seals per year get caught in abandoned fishing nets and either drown or suffocate. Whales mistake plastic bags for squid, and birds may mistake plastic pellets for fish eggs. At other times, animals accidentally eat the plastic while feeding on natural food.
The largest concentration of marine debris is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Marine debris most commonly originates from land-based sources. Various international agencies are currently working to reduce marine debris levels around the world.
Read more about this topic: Debris
Famous quotes containing the word marine:
“God has a hard-on for a Marine because we kill everything we see. He plays His game, we play ours.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)
“People run away from the name subsidy. It is a subsidy. I am not afraid to call it so. It is paid for the purpose of giving a merchant marine to the whole country so that the trade of the whole country will be benefitted thereby, and the men running the ships will of course make a reasonable profit.... Unless we have a merchant marine, our navy if called upon for offensive or defensive work is going to be most defective.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)