Plastics in Our Oceans

we were seeing very abnormal or the loneliness they know the la long beach which happens to be that receiving body or it wasn't wasn't saying that during the water's only went about twenty million people more founder of elite a marine research foundation he says having so many people you create a lot of trash and more than ten thousand and the year lows of washes into the ocean especially down the rivers says much of these clashes lasted all the plastics you know it's less alive generations centuries old rodolfo moore says some of the plastic in the ocean blows off ships that are transporting it it also comes from small pellets that float away from plastic manufacturers later of course and trash that blows out of landfills and garbage trucks all the plastic comes from everywhere because plastic is it's very hard to dispose of us probably just thinking you're

alive all the little tags all the little chip bags the terrible to find out just how much of this pollution is in the ocean floor has been scooping up plastic and studying it we approached the port of long beach tall cranes that look like gigantic steel giraffes are off loading some of the tens of thousands of containers of consumer goods that come in and out of the ports every day more stops his boat and he had two assistants a woven net negative these days though are the net into the water and began driving it along a route that passes the mouth of the los angeles river has reached all four track morris says his travels around the pacific have shown him that the ocean is filling up with plastic that's harming rely sea turtles each shopping bags because they resembled jellyfish in some places

albatross carcasses are filled with objects such as plastic tarps and writers more says eating plastic and harm sea birds in a number of ways that causes alterations are constant friction that lowers their ability to reproduce by putting on fat stores when they need and causes what we call false feelings of situation and also makes it more difficult for a neighbor would wear long after about fifteen minutes and it's a tough thing major general literally see we were looking at various buyers here a group of them for this because this bill

moore says in some parts of the city there are six grams of plastic for every gram of clanking here off the southern california coast the ratio is too and a half to one because it's been a while since there was a storm which would flush down big debris the pieces of plastic in more sample art it happened in tourist mall where he says plastic doesn't biodegrade but it breaks are these little pieces of plastic even though they're too small to show a big bird or a big fish they are just the right size to be ingested by little filter feeders called south is the base of the food world and that troubles charlie more because the plastics contains chemicals that can disrupt an animal's development and reproduction scientists know this can happen in the lab but they don't really know what's happening in the ocean daniel flank is an aquatic toxicologist at uc riverside we don't know

how fast the individual compound leach out of the plastic in marine victims and we don't know how they are changed one fairly aged out and what what takes place within the animal out really the crux of the matter of whether or not you get the big revision within the animal targeting the immigrants in state water quality officials say not enough research has been done to tell them how big of a problem plastics are for marine life off the coast of california dominic gregorio is with the state water resources control board i'm not aware of any studies that have shown the probable than just plastics off the coast of california caught in mortality and that sort of thing that doesn't mean it doesn't happen here just mean that that hasn't been something that has been really observed to a large degree gregorio says many of the places where birds are eating a lot of plastic have less food than the california coast the state is trying to reduce the amount of trash flowing into the ocean by encouraging recycling also new

regulations require some cities to stop most trash from getting into waterways including the la river by captain charlie moore says the trash regulations don't include small pieces like the ones he often calls up and most plastic isn't recycled so we need to change the way we package our product we need to look at all of the breakdown of bowl while paul previewed the va well the president's base sold their lives around their cigarette tax burdens of wild fauna more says people must reduce their use of plastic he recommends bringing groceries home in your own cloth bag and picking products packaged with the least amount of plastic in long beach else is that still at nine point three kpcc