Saving the Blue Heart

For the first official blog post on STBH, I thought it would only be fitting to talk about why exactly I am doing this in the first place. Why do people suddenly care about the environment and the ocean so much, and being sustainable? What happens if we don’t protect the oceans? Today, we’ll look into these questions, and take a look at what exactly is the reason the environment and oceans need saving and conservation.

To understand why we need to conserve our oceans, we need to go back in time to where it all started. I’ve prepared a short timeline for you to get a gist on what exactly has happened so far.

Plastic production and pollution has increased tenfold in the last 60 years. It has several palpable impacts on marine life, such as suffocation and entanglement of marine animals due to ingestion of plastic. According to IUCN, Wildlife such as birds, whales, fish, and turtles mistake indigestible plastic waste for food and die of starvation as their stomachs become filled with it.

This results in risk to the food chain, as microplastics become involved, and consumption of seafood might lead to risks such as immune system diseases and even cancer, if it’s contaminated with microplastics. Incinerated plastic waste releases greenhouse gases and other pollutants into the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide, dioxins, and methane. Moreover, the amount of plastic is set to double in the next 15 years according to some sources, and five according to others, which could lead to a decline in marine life and there will be at that point, more plastic than fish in the ocean.

This is why it is so important to help conserve our oceans. We depend on them everyday for basic resources, food and transport and a world with more plastic in oceans than fish would not only be extremely harmful, but could also put all organisms on earth at serious risk.