The Massive Trashing of our Oceans: Is it too late?

http://www.alternet.org/environment/massive-tragic-trashing-our-oceans-there-still-time-do-something-about-it?akid=14217.294211.taQtad&rd=1&src=newsletter1055746&t=2

It's impossible to overestimate how critical the oceans are to the overall health of life on Earth. For one thing, tiny marine plants called phytoplankton provide up to 85 percent of the world's oxygen, according to EarthSky.org. But the oceans don’t just give us good stuff like oxygen; they take away bad stuff, like carbon dioxide. A 2011 international study led by the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, estimated that the oceans absorb 27 percent of the CO2 produced by the fossil fuel combustion.

Sadly, humans have treated the oceans abominably. Overfishing is pushing the world’s fisheries to collapse. “The global fishing fleet is 2-3 times larger than what the oceans can sustainably support,” warns the World Wide Fund for Nature. “As a result, 53 percent of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited, and 32 percent are overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion.”

While we’re taking all the fish out, we’re putting incredible amounts of plastic trash in. A 2015 study by the University of Georgia and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis found that nearly 200 coastal countries put some 275 million metric tons of plastic waste into the ocean in 2010. And it’s not going away anytime soon.