Scroll down to view slide show. Although we don’t have to worry about a massive oil leak erupting in our immediate backyards, local waters do not go unharmed by the consequences of petroleum production. Save Our Shores—formed in 1978 to voice community opposition to offshore drilling—continues to fight against one of the unfortunate impacts of global oil dependence: plastic pollution.
Save Our Shores reports that 151,699 plastic pieces and 18,296 plastic bags have been collected from the local shores since 2007. Fortunately, says SOS executive director Laura Kasa, Santa Cruz is at the forefront of coastal communities enacting change. A ban on plastic bags in Santa Cruz County is awaiting its final review, and should be implemented within the year. Kasa says the ban is a crucial step in changing people’s habits.
“Bringing your canvas bag to the store instead of taking a plastic bag, reducing your use of disposable plastic items, biking to work not just on Bike to Work Day, but on a regular basis; these are all steps towards a more conservation-minded culture that will reduce our need to consider more oil drilling,” says Kasa.
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Kasa says she hopes the initiative will reduce the overall amount of plastic debris ending up in the ocean, just as the 2007 styrofoam ban considerably reduced styrofoam pollution on our beaches— despite initial resistance.
“At first some folks from the restaurant industry were skeptical about being able to transition from using styrofoam takeout containers to more environmentally-friendly products. All restaurants in our county are now complying because there are many reasonably priced biodegradable alternatives that are readily available,” says Kasa.
When plastic enters the ocean it breaks down into small particles that absorb toxic chemicals and are ingested by all levels of the ocean’s food web. Endangered sea turtles like the leatherback turtles that visit Monterey Bay are especially vulnerable to “urban tumbleweeds,” or plastic bags.
“A floating plastic bag looks very much like a jelly fish, which is also a sea turtle’s favorite food,” says local marine biologist and sea turtle expert Wallace J. Nichols.
Between one third and one half of sea turtles swimming in American waters are estimated to have some kind of plastic lodged in their digestive systems, according to the National Academy of Sciences.
But endangered sea turtles in the Gulf now face an additional danger to ingesting plastic- the fast spreading and highly toxic oil slick.
“From the time they are babies, sea turtles gravitate towards floating algae and kelp because it offers protection,” says Nichols. “An oil slick is not something they are used to, and they don’t move away from it, they may actually move into it.”
Last week, CNN documented the first sea turtle caught in the growing oil slick in the Gulf and asked Nichols, an expert on sea turtles, to identify it. Nichols confirmed the turtle was an endangered Loggerhead that had come to the surface to breathe, and was struggling to do so in water laden with oil globules.
“Oil and the ocean have a long relationship,” says Nichols. “The ocean is the lifeblood of humanity. Life runs on the ocean, but we run on oil.”
