World Environment Day 2020: Marine Fishes are threatened by dumping of Plastic waste

We know the fact that almost 70% of the earth is occupied with water in the form of diverse kinds of water bodies such as oceans, lakes and rivers etc. All these water bodies, especially oceans and seas, form an essential part of our existence as it has key roles to play in our daily life. The careless human involvement has seriously affected the marineenvironment, threatening the survival of numerous other species on earth, comprising human beings. For the previous half-century, plastic has become avitalportion of our day-to-day life. As it is generallyrecognized that plastic isn’t biodegradable, which emphasizes the hazard of sustained waste plastic for years and for generations to come. According to estimates, people everywhere the world throw away nearly four million tons of waste every day, of which 12.8% is plastic, polluting land, air and water.In the oceanic areas, the effects of plastic on marine life have started to be sensed.Various studies expose that about 12.7 million tonnes of plastic surplus are wash away into the ocean every year while 51 trillion micro plastic particles were present in ocean already.

Consumption of these plastics by marine fishes causes severe gastrointestinalcomplications which go mostly untreated. Various reportsrecommends about the ingesting of several tonnes of plastic by all type of fish every year. In addition, to triggering intestinal damage and death of these fishes, this also spread the hazardthrough the food chain, to bigger fish and marine mammals.Plastic intimidates the survival of life beneath water since smaller fishes to giant mammals and amphibians in numerous methods. In formationsreported that almost one million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals are destroyed every year because of plastic ingestion. Unluckily, various  marine fishes are on the way of extinction due to such type of ocean pollution.

It is whispered that 700 marine species could go extinct because of plastic. Recentevaluationsrecommend that at least 267 species inuniversal have been affected, together with 84% of sea turtle species, 44% of all seabird species, 96 species of fishes  and 43% of all marine mammal species – but there are perhaps many more. Deaths are mainlytriggered by the ingestion of plastics, starvation, suffocation, infection, drowning and entanglement. Recently, the presence of micro plastics in the guts of staple fishes like sardines and mackerels has become discovered. It is not conceivable to preciselyconfirm whether any specific fish species or a single specimen died due to the plastic in their bodies. But we do distinguish that micro plastics are found in phytoplankton and small fishes which enter the big fishes. Nearly 10 species of fishes namely Blackfin Cisco, Blue Walleye, Galapagos Damsel, Gravenche, Harelip Sucker,  Lake Titicaca Orestias,  Silver Trout, Tecopa Pupfish, Thicktail Chub andYellowfin Cutthroat Troutwere on the hand of extinction. Only we can protect the marine fishes from being extinct by avoiding the use of plastic and dumping waste in sea. In this world environmental day every one of us takes a pledge to avoid plastic and protect marine life. Always manufacture renewable plastic and try to avoid plastic pollution in ocean and remember poor creatures are struggling every dayto survive because of the mistake made by human as manufacturing and using plastic.