Deadly Items Thrown Into The Ocean

But despite all the green ecological campaigns and efforts to clean the oceans, we keep throwing deadly items into the ocean. Garbage will always find a way to end up in our oceans. For example, anytime you throw garbage on highways, it can end up in the rivers leading to the ocean, and when you dropped something carelessly while you were sunbathing on the beach, it will end up in the ocean, too.

How many times in the past years you have watched the news, you know that many beaches in Mexico had to be closed down due to the discovery of large amounts of trash, medical waste and even syringes.  The most alarming fact is that many of these items will take up to 50 years to disintegrate. 

Items are not indigenous to our oceans, but when ships were invented and traveling by ship was possible, many people started sending cargos for commercial gain without knowing that many of those ships would sink and lose cargo in the oceans when they were caught in storms.

The following are just a few examples of items that ended up in the ocean:

In 1990, people in Washington and Oregon were thrilled to hear that many shipping containers of Nike sneakers and work boots were lost in a storm; everybody ran off to the beach to grabbed up their free pair of Nike sneakers on shore. There’s a rumor stating that some people matched pairs to sell for unbeatable prices. 

The NHL was not too happy when a ship lost 30,000 pieces of hockey gear in the ocean, in 1994. 

In 1992, rubber duckies floated in the ocean when a ship lost thousands of bathtub toys.

More and more marine biologists are discovering dead whales whose stomachs contain a variety of deadly items such as rubber duckies, toothbrushes, shoes, plastic bags, shampoo bottles, even cigarette lighters.