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The largest ocean-based source of plastic pollution is discarded fishing gear (including traps and nets), estimated to be up to 90% of plastic debris in some areas. [56] [57] Continental plastic litter enters the ocean largely through storm-water runoff, flowing into watercourses or directly discharged into coastal waters. [58]
Human activities affect marine life and marine habitats through overfishing, habitat loss, the introduction of invasive species, ocean pollution, ocean acidification and ocean warming. These impact marine ecosystems and food webs and may result in consequences as yet unrecognised for the biodiversity and continuation of marine life forms.
While marine pollution can be obvious, as with the marine debris shown above, it is often the pollutants that cannot be seen that cause most harm.. Marine pollution occurs when substances used or spread by humans, such as industrial, agricultural and residential waste, particles, noise, excess carbon dioxide or invasive organisms enter the ocean and cause harmful effects there.
Aspiration of water contaminated by scrubber medium. Leakage of water into the breathing loop of a rebreather, which dissolves alkaline material used to chemically remove carbon dioxide from exhaled air. This contaminated water may move further along the breathing loop and reach the diver's mouth, where it may cause choking, and in the case of ...
A rip is a strong, localized, and narrow current of water that moves directly away from the shore by cutting through the lines of breaking waves, like a river flowing out to sea. The force of the current in a rip is strongest and fastest next to the surface of the water. [1] Rip currents can be hazardous to people in the water.
Water is the medium of the oceans, the medium which carries all the substances and elements involved in the marine biogeochemical cycles. Water as found in nature almost always includes dissolved substances, so water has been described as the "universal solvent" for its ability to dissolve so many substances.
In contrast to undertow, rip currents are responsible for the great majority of drownings close to beaches. When a swimmer enters a rip current, it starts to carry them offshore. The swimmer can exit the rip current by swimming at right angles to the flow, parallel to the shore, or by simply treading water or floating until the rip releases them.
Oceanic dispersal is a type of biological dispersal that occurs when terrestrial organisms transfer from one land mass to another by way of a sea crossing. Island hopping is the crossing of an ocean by a series of shorter journeys between islands, as opposed to a single journey directly to the destination.