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A young Pilot whale was found off of Thailand in serious trouble. In spite of rescue attempts he died. His stomach was found to be full of plastic. Among other things, there were 80 single use shopping bags. The whale starved to death because of all the plastic he had consumed. When you think about how much plastic is in the ocean, what else is there for him to eat. 

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018...als/#close

Most plastics are not recycled so they do end up in the ocean. Cleaning up the ocean is a monumental task. It is going to take a global initiative to have any meaningful impact on ocean plastic. First we need to stop dumping plastic in the ocean in the first place.

If we don't do something we are going to see an ecological disaster on a scale that is unimaginable. If we knock out key species that keep the oceans healthy we run the risk of destroying the oceans that cover the majority of out planet. Most of the earth's surface is ocean. Whatever we do to the oceans is going to have an impact on the whole planet.

This is not about one dead whale. This is about a warning sign that the majority of our planet's surface is in trouble. I don't think we want to wait this one out and see what happens. It is a little like playing on the tracks and deciding not to move while the train approaches  because we want to see what happens. It is not going to be good.

I cannot imagine what will happen. It's horrible.

So how does all that plastic get in the oceans?

Well I don't know about other countries....and some of them may not care two hoots. But in the UK is was a monumental task to get a plastic sludge cleared out of the River Don.

The Daily Mail got involved, and tried to get this done. The beaurocratic problems they ran into have to be read about to be believed!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...eared.html

So it appears thngs like that are certainly one way all that plastic is polluting the oceans.

I read the whole article and what a nightmare to clean up the pollution in one river in one area. It does explain how so much garbage ends up in the ocean. We need to make people use less plastic and we need to make them recycle what they use.

There should be an easier way to clean up a river. If they kick up so many obstacles to a river clean up, how do they expect to clean up the ocean which has to be a global project. It doesn't matter whose garbage it is, we need to clean it up.

Far too many sea creatures are dying because of eating plastic or becoming tangled in it.