Over the past few weeks, I have been working on the research phase of my ocean plastics inquiry. The past few weeks have been dedicated to researching the rest of the background information on ocean ecosystems. I also worked extensively on research of plastic. For this research I read articles and watched videos about the origins of plastic, what plastic is used for, how plastic gets into our ecosystems, and what the direct impact of ocean plastics is. Over these past few weeks I have been focused on diving deeper into my research, enabling me to get a better understanding of the topic. I am almost completely done with my research, which will hopefully be wrapped up this week, after which I will begin creating my simulation. You can click here for a detailed account of my current research, or you can continue reading this post to understand an overview of what I have learned and researched in the past few weeks. There are many different types of plastic, each one having slightly different properties and slightly different uses, but the one thing that all plastics have in common is that they are not biodegradable. This means that once plastic is created, it will remain in the environment forever, or at the very least for thousands and thousands of years. Since plastic never breaks down, that means that it can easily become a pollutant if it is released into natural habitats. Most plastics are made to be single-use plastic, meaning that is used for one purpose, one time, and then disposed of. This is very wasteful. One of the main problems with plastic materials is that disposal systems for plastic are not very good, causing plastic waste to escape into ecosystems, oftentimes the ocean. One of the positive qualities of plastic for consumers is that it is very light weight, but it can easily hold many items; because plastic is so light, environmental factors such as wind or storms can cause plastic to be picked up and brought to the ocean where it is deposited. Another way that plastic can get into the environment is if run-off from rain pushes litter into storm drains. These storm drains empty out in rivers or streams, all of which eventually end up in the ocean. This means that plastic for cities or suburban communities can often end up in oceans, even if the city is hundreds of miles away from the water. So, the first problem is that plastic can easily get into ocean ecosystems, but the second problem is what happens once the plastic gets there. There are a multitude of things that could happen: it could break down into tiny pieces of microplastic, mistakingly eat by animals, or harm animals by chocking or strangling them. Plastic is not known to be degradable in any way, but ocean water currents and sunlight cause big pieces of plastic to break down into tiny microscopic beads of plastic, making the waste virtually impossible to clean out of the ocean. Microplastics cause major destruction in the ocean, as microorganisms often form colonies on them, attaching themselves to this harmful material which can then be eaten by larger predators. Other pieces of plastic are mistaken as food by animals who might think they are fish or even jellyfish. Some pieces of plastic end up getting caught in animals throats, cutting up their organs, or strangling animals. Not only does plastic directly kill animals, but if animals do survive eating plastic, the plastic that they eat over their whole lifetime often ends up cumulating in their stomach. This can kill animals in the ocean. Or, the ingested plastic can travel. up the food chain as predators eat prey, causing the organisms at the top of the ocean to have huge amounts of plastic in their bodies. As more and more plastic builds up in animals bodies, and as the plastic moves up the food chain, the plastic becomes more potent and more toxic. Plastic itself is very toxic, often being associated with cancer. Many types of plastics are known to be carcinogenic. Eventually, as the ingested plastic moves far enough up the food chain, and reaches the human level. Yes, you read that right. Microplastics end up in human seafood such as fish or shellfish. Studies have shown that shellfish such as clams or oysters on average have 8 pieces of plastic in them. The plastic is transferred to humans when these animals are eaten. Chances are, you have plastic in you too. Now, this is a major problem, because plastic is not food, we all know that. No one would go around eating a plastic water bottle, or a plastic shopping bag, but essentially that is what we are doing when we eat seafood. Our waste, ends up in our ecosystems which in turn means our waste ends up in us. This is the scary reality that we live in, and I hope to bring more awareness to this important topic through my inquiry and research of the topic.
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Overview of my InquiryIn this inquiry I hope to learn about how our ocean ecosystems work, the effect of ocean plastics on our oceans, and what we can do to lessen the effects of ocean plastics, through research. Once I have my background knowledge, I hope to be able to take what I learned and model it in a programmed biological simulation using starlogo nova, which is a programming language. My simulation will be able to vary the amount of plastic that reaches the oceans, the toxicity of the plastics to the ocean life, and the amount of ocean creatures in order to take data from the simulation on how ocean plastics affect ecosystems and what makes a healthy ocean ecosystem. Once I finish working on the simulation I will write up a summary explaining what I learned and connecting it back to what we can do to help our ocean ecosystems. Through this, I will be learning about scientific writing.
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