The hidden dangers of plastics pollution for marine animals

Brut America

Whales washed ashore with their stomachs filled with plastic bottles. Turtles choked by six-pack rings.   We’ve seen the dramatic effect plastic has on marine life. But the far-more-common danger of plastic pollution is actually… invisible.

Transcript

00:00You'll see all these different images and videos and things that go around online that

00:11show really dramatically how plastic can kill animals at sea.

00:25It can rip through their intestines or it can fill them up or block the passage of food

00:29through their bodies.

00:36More often and what I see as more problematic is the extent at which plastic and these little

00:42microplastics and nanoplastics have proliferated through the food web.

00:55When plastic gets smaller than five millimeters, scientists call it microplastics and these

01:00plastics are very harmful because they can be easily ingested by a huge number of marine

01:05species.

01:06They're also very hard to clean up.

01:09How do you clean up a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of plastic?

01:12Really, really hard.

01:13These microplastics break down into even smaller pieces of plastic called nanoplastics that

01:18are so small.

01:19These are things that are smaller than one tenth of one millimeter and when plastics

01:24get that small, they can pass through your gut wall and into your body tissues.

01:29We found microplastic bits and nanoplastic bits, more importantly, in things like livers

01:34and muscle tissues and gills of fish.

01:49What makes plastic particularly dangerous or potentially dangerous is that we add components

01:55to it.

01:56We add chemicals to it that increase the durability, the flexibility, the inflammability.

02:03These are much more worrisome than the plastic backbone itself, but almost every type of

02:09user plastic that we have, have these additives, but also there's been a lot of good research

02:14that has demonstrated that when plastics float out at sea, they actually act as a contaminant

02:20sponge.

02:21So a lot of contaminants want to be attached to something hard and plastic is a great substrate

02:28for which these contaminants can associate with.

02:31When animals eat plastic, they can get this dose of contaminants that can be potentially

02:37detrimental for their system.

02:47Plastic attracts a lot of marine life in addition to these contaminants, things like algaes

02:51and phytoplanktons.

02:52And when that happens, it concentrates the smell of productive foraging areas.

02:58And so what we found and shown in a number of different experiments now is that when

03:02this biological life grows on the outside of plastic, it makes plastic seem superficially

03:08attractive to these animals.

03:10And once their nose tells them that there's going to be food, it brings them to the area

03:14where there might be plastic debris, perhaps instead of food or in addition to food.

03:33We're not separate from the natural world.

03:36Anything that we can find out about these fish in the ocean, which might seem unimportant,

03:40are actually very important because we're finding it in our bodies as well.

03:51There's this very common phrase of reduce, reuse and recycle, right?

03:56The order of those words is actually very important.

03:58Reduce your use of plastic.

03:59That will have the biggest impact of the three.

04:02If you need to use that item of plastic, can you reuse it?

04:06That's really important.

04:07And then finally, of course, if you can recycle, do it.

04:10So reduce, reuse, recycle and vote for environmentally friendly legislation and educate yourself.

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