Advocating for Oceans; we must Stop Using it as our Trash Dump - Clean Up the World’s Oceans.

Plastic Threats to Wildlife. In the Ocala National Forest of Florida, a black bear cub digs through trash, only to have its head become encased entirely in a plastic jar. It takes the Florida Game and Fish Commission 10 days to finally track down and rescue the cub. A California brown pelican carries around a plastic bag twisted low around its neck. On a protected reserve in Brazil a boa constrictor is found with a PVC (polyvinyl chloride) plastic ring slipped over its body, forming a tight noose. A stork in Europe has its entire upper body sheathed inside a large plastic bag. Herons, ducks, opossums, and gulls are entrapped by six-pack rings. These are just a few of the disturbing images that demonstrate the harm that can befall our wildlife from plastic waste.

Humans produce as much as 300 million tons of new plastics across our planet each year. Plastic production worldwide just keeps growing as it displaces other durable (but more expensive) materials, like glass and metal. Today, an average person living in Western Europe or in North America uses around 200 pounds of plastic annually, mostly in the form of packaging. According to the United Nations Environmental Program, 20-40% of the plastic used worldwide is disposed of in landfills, where its resources are wasted, taking up valuable space, blighting communities, and harming wildlife. A mere 12% of plastic waste gets recycled, with unrecycled plastic materials typically getting sent to landfills where they may take as long as 1,000 years to decompose. Unlike paper or cotton plastic does not biodegrade. It only breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces over very long times. These fragments, along with manufactured micro-plastic beads, pose an even worse hazard to aquatic wildlife.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that somewhere between 500 billion and a trillion plastic bags alone used worldwide each year. And less than 1% of these bags ever end up being recycled. Consequently, they pose a severe hazard to wildlife, both on land and in our waters. More than 250 species of fish, sea turtles, marine birds, seals, whales and dolphins have suffered from eating or becoming entangled in marine debris from plastics.
So what can you do to help protect wildlife from plastic?
Recycling is a good step – but purchasing a product that uses plastic to begin with can simply continue to drive demand. The most common single-use plastic items are bottles, bags, straws, utensils, lids and cups. Find reusable, non-plastic alternatives for these items, like canvas grocery bags or stainless steel straws.

Another way you can help is to encourage your local government to ban plastic bags. Some are already doing this in supermarkets, drug stores, or even all retailers. You can also pick up any plastic litter you see and place it in a recycling bin, and  you can organize a community cleanup day and volunteer to pick up plastic litter on the beach, near local streams, in a nearby park, or along roads.

It’s also important to remember that plastic debris is more than just a litter problem. To understand the full range of its impacts, we need to look at plastic big and small. Later this month, we’ll cover microplastics – a nearly invisible but equally devastating threat to wildlife. The post Plastic Threats to Wildlife appeared first on Defenders of Wildlife Blog.

DolphinsThe Center's Oceans program advocated to stop dangerous offshore drilling in California by mobilizing public outrage and challenging offshore fracking permits. We also won a lawsuit, with partners, challenging the Navy's unfettered use of sonar and bombing in biologically sensitive areas for whales and dolphins.

And following a years-long campaign, involving lawsuits and protests and public education across the country, to save the Arctic from destructive offshore oil drilling, we celebrated Shell's withdrawal from drilling in the Chukchi Sea and the government's cancellation of new Arctic oil and gas lease sales in the Arctic.

We also secured nearly 7,000 square miles of ocean and beach habitat for Hawaiian monk seals, at risk of extinction because of limited food availability, entanglement in fishing gear, predation, and disease, and now global warming; and we won a proposal to protect almost 40,000 square miles of protected habitat for North Atlantic right whales along the East Coast.

Dive into our Oceans webpage and peruse pages on Hawaiian monk seals and North Atlantic right whales.
seabin-in-action-by-unknown
Target: Christy Goldfuss, Managing Director at the White House Council on Environmental Quality
Goal: Deploy a cheap technology that can clean up and improve the health of Earth’s oceans.
There is no easy way to put this: mankind is slowly but surely destroying the ocean. The biggest source of ocean pollution is called nonpoint source pollution. That basically means that the pollution cannot be tracked back to a single source. It’s a collection of different pollutants, such as car oil, plastic/paper bags, and topsoil runoff from farms. Even air pollution can play a huge part in the pollution of Earth’s ocean, with acid rain becoming more and more common. Environmental issues have been addressed frequently in the past few presidential debates, and many have criticized the Obama administration’s lack of attention on such issues. The time for the current government to adopt The Seabin Project and start cleaning the world’s oceans is now.
The Seabin Project was started by two young Australian men named Pete Ceglinski and Andrew Turton. They built a bin made of 70%-100% recycled material with a natural fibre catch bag that collects all the garbage in the sea while still sucking water to the very bottom of the bin. The bin, which is attached to a water pump at the edge of a marina, dock, or boat, will then pump the water through a filter and, once cleaned, back into the ocean. The entire process is extremely simple and the Seabin itself is cost-effective. The biggest issue that governments around the world are facing when it comes to ocean pollution is cost and maintenance. The Seabin completely eradicates those issues; it’s easy to maintain, works 24/7, and doesn’t cost much to make.
This project, in the hands of the United States government, can be quickly spread among the nations marinas, ports, bays, etc. Even without the government funding, Seabins are already scheduled to be sold in Australia. It’s a cheap and quick solution to a problem that’s only ever had concepts for solutions. Sign the petition below to urge the United States government to adopt the project.
PETITION LETTER: Click Here To Help!
Dear Managing Director Goldfuss,
Our oceans are sick and dying. Thousands of underwater habitats have been destroyed, or are being destroyed, yearly. I urge you to adopt the Seabin project and have the United States furthur fund it. The Seabin Project wasstarted by two young Australian men named Pete Ceglinski and Andrew TurtonThey built a bin made of70%-100recycled material with a natural fibre catch bag that collects all the garbage in the sea while stillsucking water to the very bottom of the bin.
The binwhich is attached to a water pump at the edge of a marinadockor boatwill then pump the waterthrough a filter andonce cleanedback into the oceanThe entire process is extremely simple and the Seabinitself is cost-effectiveit’s easy to maintainworks 24/7and doesn’t cost much to make. Please make a push to use the Seabin to clean up our oceans.
Sincerely,
[Your Name Here]
Photo Credit: inhabitat.com
State Water Quality Protection Could Be Eliminated. The Legislature is taking a rare Constitutional action to force DEP to withdraw its proposed Flood Hazard Control Act Rules for violating legislative intent.
The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) proposed amendments to the Flood Hazard Control Act and Stormwater Rules. The proposed rules weaken current flood and water quality protections and are opposed by environmental organizations, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).  Your action is needed IMMEDIATELY to stop these proposed rules. 

The rules are so bad that the New Jersey Senate took the unusual action to invalidate the rules by passing a Concurrent Resolution - SCR 180 on October 23, 2015.  It is now up to the Assembly to pass the identical Assembly Concurrent Resolution ACR-249.
Use our Take Action Tool - it is quick and easy!
It is imperative that the Assembly approves ACR- 249 this Monday, January 11th.


The EPA has informed the DEP that the proposed rules would violate the federal Clean Water Act and the State Surface Water Quality Standards.  FEMA also has informed DEP that the proposal does not comply with FEMA regulations and is inconsistent with National Flood Insurance Program requirements. It could also jeopardize eligibility for federal flood insurance and disaster recovery funds. 


Background
Under the guise of streamlining and reducing the regulatory burden on applicants wanting to build close to streams and wetlands, DEP is proposing to roll back protections that prevent water quality degradation and prevent housing development where it would impair or destroy natural resources. 


DEP is proposing to eliminate Special Water Resource Protection Areas (SWRPA's) under the Stormwater Management rule. A SWRPA sets strict limits on what can and cannot occur within a given area, typically through deed restriction.  The designation of SWRPA's a major strategies for protecting waters with exceptional ecological significance.  This strategy was also developed to address "impaired" or contaminated waters in the state.  


The Pinelands Preservation Alliance, NJ Highlands Coalition, NJ Sierra Club, Clean Water Action, ANJEC, NJCF, Raritan Headwaters Association, Environment NJ, and Senate and Assembly legislators have moved the ball this far - NOW IT IS UP TO YOU!
Marine Life Can’t Keep Up With Climate Change. Researchers say conditions in the northeastern Pacific Ocean foretell what’s to come worldwide. 
If you want an idea of what oceans around the world may be like in the not-too-distant future, look to the Pacific Ocean off the West Coast of the United States.
That’s the message from a team of scientists who analyzed dozens of recent research papers on climate change’s impact on ocean conditions. Their work was published in the journal BioScience.
From British Columbia to Mexico, increasing acidity, rising temperatures, and lower oxygen levels are putting multiple stresses on marine life at the same time, said George Somero, a marine biologist at the Hopkins Marine Station of Stanford University in Pacific Grove, California, and the lead author of the analysis.
Scientists are just starting to understand how these threats combine to affect animals throughout the food web, Somero said. “You can go from the level of a proton, a single unit of acidity, all the way up to the level of marine mammals. If you acidify the water, the food chain starts to crumble literally and figuratively, all the way up to killer whales.”
The effects extend to our dinner plates because the ecosystem shifts have affected Pacific salmon, shellfish, and other commercially valuable species. Along with ocean acidification, “we see small rises in temperature,” said marine biologist Jody Beers of the Hopkins Marine Station. “We also see more pronounced levels in hypoxia, with shoaling—spreading of the oxygen minimum zone—into coastal areas.”
These conditions have contributed to mass die-offs of fish, crabs, and seabirds in recent years, including last summer’s starvation of seabirds from Northern California to British Columbia.
Only 81 of These Killer Whales Are Left, but Their Chances of Survival Just Got a Big Boost
Some species are moving northward in search of cooler waters, said Beers, as well as moving deeper into the ocean, where oxygen levels remain livable.
“When you look at the ocean, the changes are happening in one direction,” said Somero. “Oxygen is going down, temperatures are going up, pH is going down, [and it’s] the fastest rate at which these variables have changed in the earth’s history. When people say glibly, ‘Things always change. Life goes on,’ well, things have never changed this quickly.”
“When you’re talking about fishes, whales, seals—big animals—they have very long generation times,” he added. “And the rate at which things are changing is so quick that these organisms just won’t be able to keep up.”
There are steps people can take to help build resilience among marine species, Somero and Beers said, such as cutting runoff of fertilizers from farmland into the ocean, which can create oxygen-depleted dead zones near coastlines.
“But the continuous addition of CO2 to the atmosphere, that’s the big challenge, and it’s not clear what we do about that,” Somero said. “Even if we were to stop them, the planet is going to continue warming, and the CO2 will continue to go into the oceans.”
Getting a better grasp on the combined impacts is vital, said Beers. “By continuing to understand how these multiple stressors work together and the effect they have on marine animals, we can start to identify some of the more sensitive species,” she said. “There may be one species that is more tolerant than another, and that may influence decisions that policy makers make in terms of managing our fisheries.”