always had a love for animals most
little kids love doggies and kitties and
horsies and penguins however I loved
squids sea stars sea slugs and just
about any other funky looking Forgotten
animal now my love for animals was
certainly well fed due to where I live
which is by some of the country’s
greatest zoos and aquariums like the
Lincoln Park Zoo Shedd Aquarium in
Brookfield Zoo after a few ocean
inspired writing pieces school research
projects and boring talk of marine
biology to my friends and family I
finally found a use for my mixture of
animal knowledge last summer I think I
had the greatest summer job an
interpreter at the Shedd Aquarium there
there’s the Shedd Aquarium if you don’t
didn’t know yeah so some this was part
of the teen work-study program which
accepts about 30 high school students to
work at the aquarium some would work in
the gardens outside some worked in
customer service however I was an
interpreter which basically means that
I’d share animal facts with visitors so
unfortunately I wasn’t able to interpret
any squid to sea jellies or sea slugs as
I was only to interpret what was
assigned but anyway we were assigned a
new post to interpret called plastic
oceans it looked like this it was a
small raised splash pool with little
fish toys in it and kids would pretend
to be ocean predators and used the
utensils to capture the fish however
there’s a catch plastic feeds polluted
the pool and prevented the kids from
catching only fish no matter how careful
they were plastic beads ended up within
their catches along with their plastic
fish now this was a good way to keep got
the kids acquainted with the horrors of
plastic pollution without it without it
being scary but it was actually fun and
so many kids got it really attached to
this game and would not want to leave
and I encountered so many crying kids at
this post that didn’t want to leave that
I decided to carry around a pad of
stickers to help stop there crying and
spare their parents sanity now this was
one of my favorite posts to interpret as
I was able to directly share ocean
conservation stories with the parents of
the kids who were playing and I quickly
learned that the majority of parents
with kids aged 4 to 8
had no idea that Americans use 500
million straws daily and keep in mind
that the American population is 323
million and this was one of sheds
biggest campaigns it’s called shed the
straw and by using by eliminating
unnecessary one use plastics from your
lifestyle you can help reduce the amount
of plastic that makes its way into the
environment
however when plastic makes it does make
its way into the ocean
the currents usually carry it to a gyre
which is where a bunch of wind patterns
and ocean currents converge and create a
type of circulation in the water one of
the most notable gyres is the great
person or than pacific gyre also known
as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and
unfortunately many species live in or
migrate through the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch one of which is the
Elysian albatross they have six foot
long wings fans and they’re able to be
out at sea for months at a time without
even touching land their hunting skills
is to skim the surface of the water to
catch fish and squid that are swimming
on top and this is a little problematic
as when they are skimming the surface
plastic ends up they end up catching
plastic along with their food and they
eat it and when they bring their catch
back to their chicks then the chicks end
up eating the plastic as well and the
unfortunate consequences of these chicks
eating plastics include their stomachs
being cut internally or the they think
that they’re full even though they have
no food in their system and die of
starvation and when you look at pictures
of the decaying all the trusses you see
the types of plastics that they ate and
as you can see in this one you could see
a straw some bottle caps plastic lighter
and a lot of miscellaneous
unidentifiable plastics it’s hard to
believe that us humans have
unconsciously done such horrible things
not only to delays albatross but to all
other sorts of animals whether they are
a terrestrial or aquatic furry or scaly
local or abroad now what can we do to
help resolve this issue of plastic
pollution stop using unnecessary one use
plastics plastic straws utensils
shopping bag
I’ll have simple alternatives unlike
paper or other natural products plastics
don’t degrade they just got smaller and
smaller turning into micro plastics so
really plastics break up and not down
the best way to reduce our footprint is
to reduce our consumption and the human
population as a whole needs to eliminate
these one use items that will last
longer than several generations and the
most important step to realize when the
most important stuff should realize when
thinking of ocean sustainability is to
realize that it starts with one simple
stuff to say to shed the straw thank you [Applause]