How Things Should Be

             

            Hello, my name is Rainy Willis, I would once again like to start this by telling ILC how much I appreciate the help they have given me. I am learning so much from them and I am learning how to notice things that I wouldn't have even considered as a problem before last month. Thank you ILC! Today I am going to be showing you what a healthy version of the eco-system that I am currently studying would look like versus its current state.

            How things change. Everything is constantly changing. Take a minute and just look around you notice everything that's changing. Maybe the time, or the color of the sky, or maybe the temperature there is always something. Just because we can't see it doesn't mean that it isn't. Did you know that 15 million blood cells are produced and destroyed every second in our bodies without us even noticing! Just as we change and the world changes, without us knowing its nature is changing too. We have disturbed the natural order of things, for example...plastic, plastic is not supposed to be here the earth can't even get rid of it herself so why did we create it? We created it because it could help us. Because it could make our already simple lives easier. Well in doing so we are successfully destroying one of the largest eco-systems that currently exists. 

        I am going to explain to you how the ocean should look then I am going to explain what the ocean currently looks like and then I am going to compare the two. First, a healthy ocean is free of garbage, plastic, oil spills, etc. If we keep dumping garbage and plastic into the ocean by 2050 there is said to be more plastic than fish in the ocean. A clean (plastic-free) ocean would mean much healthier fish, and other aquatic species. As mentioned in previous posts plastics containing PCB are known to dramatically decrease fertility or manage to make an animal completely infertile. Take for example Lulu the orca she had so much PBC in her lipid tissue that she was as far as we know completely infertile. So if the ocean was free of plastic fertility rates would most likely spike and species now diminishing would re-populate. 

        Now comes time for the sad reality that honestly I didn't know about until a few months ago. The current state that our ocean is in is terrible. Everything is dying from animals of every imaginable species to coral reefs. What is responsible for this travesty? Plastic, and humans that's all there is to it. This is our fault. Thanks to us 100 million marine animals die per year from plastic waste alone. 100,000 marine animals die yearly from plastic strangulation. These aren't even all of them these are just the animals that have been accounted for. Approximately 1 out of 3 marine mammals are found tangled in the garbage, and to top it all off 12-14,000 tons of plastic is consumed by north pacific fish alone per year!! 

        In each of these perspectives, there are two main factors biotic and abiotic. A biotic factor described in the simplest terms is something that is alive for example seals, whales, plankton, etc. An abiotic factor is exactly the opposite it is something that is not alive for example, sand, stones, bones, dead plant matter, etc. These two things are what categorize an eco-system in the simplest way living and dead. In a healthy ocean, there would be lots of biotic factors. Animals, plants, almost everything would be alive. In the ocean today there are more things dying than there should be taken for example the coral reefs. Coral reefs are rapidly dying here is why. Once again we are the cause for this problem as well as most of us probably already know burning coal, oil, and gas produce carbon dioxide. Most of us probably also know that carbon dioxide is the gas used to carbonate/Fizz drinks. Just as carbon dioxide is absorbed into our drinks, carbon dioxide is absorbed into the ocean. Once the carbon dioxide enters the ocean it turns the water more acidic. So the more CO2 in the ocean the more acidic is the water and the more acidic the water is the harder it is for the coral's skeletons to calcify. Which means that they can't grow and they start to die. 

        In 1998 El Nino weather pattern started the worst coral-bleaching ever recorded. In one year alone 16% of the ENTIRE WORLDS coral reefs were wiped out! Rising carbon dioxide levels leave the coral weak and vulnerable which in turn means that they quickly bleach and die! Once the reefs die they are no longer able to provide fish with food and shelter. Corals bleach (turn white) when water temperatures rise and they get shocked and expel the colorful food-producing algae that live inside of the coral themselves. Some of these reefs are able to recover but many don't and the entire eco-system based on the coral reefs basically disappears. The bleaching of the coral reefs is not a problem to be taken lightly if you want to help rescue and rehabilitate dying corals donate here  https://www.ourbreathingplanet.com/global-warming-and-coral-reefs/?gclid=CjwKCAiAouD_BRBIEiwALhJH6DIcA_lSePEDERp7wxgc9C2Bjco45q0L7ZzpXlW0MUBivkP-ObjxwhoCBIoQAvD_BwE Here are some pictures of many reefs around the world bleached and dying. 

There are not many solutions for the many problems our world faces but we should at least try the solutions before succumbing to our problems.