The ships captain had a drinking problem and on the night of the incident he was unfit to be in charge of the tanker and so left an unqualified crewmember in control. This inexperienced crewmember wouldn’t have collided with Bligh Reef if the ships RAYCAS radar had not been broken and disabled for more than a year before the disaster. The incorrect crewmember being in charge of the tanker (the third mate instead of Captain Joseph Hazelwood) and broken equipment played a huge role in the collision. Environmental Impacts Marine creatures were affected greatly by the spill as the toxic oil disrupted the food chain; the oil massively destroyed plankton numbers as it prevented sunlight from getting through the water (Plankton need to sunlight to grow, reproduce and ultimately end up as food for fish). Recent scientific studies have found that the fish developed gross deformities such as extra fins, or suffered from retarded development.
They are areas so overloaded with pollutants that they have difficulty sustaining any life.” Dead Zones are created by fertilizer and pollution run off from our very own backyards. These harmful chemicals use our river and stream systems as an easy alley-way type access to our coastal areas. Because of all the chemical run offs from farms that are near the coastline, countries that thrive off of agricultural activity have extremely high contents of population in the ocean surrounding them. With all the chemicals being dumped into the ocean, this creates large patches of ocean along the coastline that have absolutely no oxygen, therefore earning the nickname “dead zone”. Due to the Dead Zone’s lack of oxygen, no living organism can survive in any given patch of that type of water.
The topic I chose to write about is the effects of an oil spill on an environment and ecosystems. When this event occurs it is very devastating and it impacts entire ecosystems of the affected areas. Oil spills are very dangerous and can wipe out species from the areas it affects, large numbers of wildlife like fish, seals, whales, plankton, crabs, and birds are killed during this event. The entire ecosystem is change forever and it will never go back to the same. Oils spills can cover up large areas of land with black tar that is very difficult to clean up; if this happens out at sea the tar stretches into a thin slick that stretches out for miles until it hits land.
At the same time, supplies water to Kiev's 2.4 million residents. This caused a major problem to the people as now; their drinking water is contaminated with radioactive materials. Other than that, the radioactivity in the seas, lakes and rivers became a threat to aquatic life. Thankfully, the groundwater was slightly affected because the radioactive material fortunately decayed before it could reach the groundwater supplies. Four kilometers of pine trees turned reddish-brown after the accident.
Further, rogue waves have been blamed for ripping the bow off of a Norwegian freighter near the tip of South Africa in 1974, almost capsizing the Queen Elizabeth in 1942 off the coast of Greenland, striking the Queen Elizabeth H in 1995, and for swamping military aircraft carriers and tearing tankers in half (McDonald A21). These waves have also been immortalized in popular culture, as evidenced by the 1972 film The Poseidon Adventure and its 2006 remake Poseidon. These huge waves are called rogue waves—or monster or freak waves—and can be encountered during bad weather storms or even in calm seas, but the fundamental aspect is that they appear with little warning. The biggest problem is the lack of scientific data from shipboard measurements of such waves because of their propensity to appear quickly and without warning. Rogue waves can also disappear as quickly as they form.
There are a tremendous amount of negatives people should consider before buying a bottle of water. Not only does bottled water increase pollution, but it is a 1000 times more expensive than tap water and also the plastic of the bottle contains chemicals that are very harmful to the human body. Pollution is already one of the biggest concerns the United States as a whole have. The bottles that bottle the water that everyone buys is one of the main things that could be recycled that aren’t. In fact, 80% of used plastic bottles are not recycled and in effect to not recycling they are blown into oceans and waterways polluting our environment.
It is a problem because the level of water population we have now can kill the animals within the water. Some of these animals we use to feed many people, so it messes with our own food supply. If this is not stopped people may kill off all oceans and the very food supply we need. This would leave many people, who eat fish, to stare, if fish was there main means of food. Recently people, or human activities have contributed to this problem because not only are we still dumping, we are also still drilling in these water sources.
Because of the climate changes animals are leaving and dying and plants are dying. Most of the fish that live in the Great Barrier Reef are native and don’t live anywhere else. If the reefs deteriorate and the animals die we won’t have them on earth anymore. There are 1500 species of marine animals, 360 species of hard coral, 600 species of echinoderms (which are like starfish, sea urchins, sea cucumbers), 500 species of seaweed, a variety of marine mammals (like whales, dolphins, dugongs), 6 species of marine turtles, 200 species of birds, and 125 species of sharks. Those are a lot of living things that we are killing.
2. Ship strikes are to blame for 90% of North Atlantic whale deaths for which the cause is known. This is excluding deaths from natural causes such as old age (Ship Strikes). C. The third threat is Whaling. 1.
Plastic bags take many lifetimes to biodegrade and their contents are harmful to the environment. Plastic bags are one of the most common items recovered in coastal clean ups. Animals such as turtles often mistake the plastic bags for jellyfish and eat the bags, resulting in death. Local governments have started, and should continue, to implement taxes and charges in an effort to reduce the unnecessarily high consumption of these harmful plastic bags. Why the Tax or Charge Works Plastic bag waste in Europe is a major problem.