OCEAN POLLUTION: 11 FACTS YOU NEED TO KNOW

So how does trash get into the ocean? It’s dumped, pumped, spilled, leaked and even washed out with our laundry. Each year, we expose the world’s waterways to an increasing variety of pollutants — plastic debris, chemical runoff, crude oil and more.

Sharks at unprecedented risk of extinction after 71 per cent decline

Numbers of oceanic sharks and rays have declined at what researchers describe as an “alarming” 71 per cent over almost half a century, leading to what researchers say is an unprecedented increase in risk of extinction.
Conservationists have been warning for years about the unsustainable killing of the apex predators, based on regional reports and data on individual species, but a paper published today is the first to offer an authoritative global overview.

Gray whales are starving and dying off at an alarming rate along the Pacific Coast

Scientists are not exactly sure why the whales are dying, but in a newly released study, published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, researchers conclude it is likely a result of starvation due lack of prey, perhaps caused by warming Arctic waters where they feed. If that’s true, the concern is that mass die-offs like this may become more frequent in the future as waters continue to heat up due to human-caused climate change.

The state of nature: 41 percent of UK species have declined since 1970s

Red squirrel in the natural environment

A new report has found that the UK’s wildlife is continuing to crash, with hundreds of species now at risk of disappearing from our shores altogether.
Over the past 50 years, urbanisation, agriculture, pollution and climate change have all caused the nation’s plants and animals to dwindle – a trend that has continued unabated within the last decade despite efforts to reverse these losses.