9781422279168

chain. If they lack the sun’s energy, they can’t produce the vital nutrients that feed other, bigger animals like turtles; the more of these animals that die, the less food there is for sharks and other predators. One way or another, the en- tire food chain suffers. Eventually, plastics ingested by fish can work their way up the food chain, and humans end up consuming them. If the Garbage Patch represents how humans can drasti- cally affect our ocean environment for the worse, it is also an opportunity to show how we can affect it for the better. One young Dutch inventor, Boyan Slat, has designed a sys- tem of floating barriers and screens to trap debris on the open ocean. A prototype for the system was launched on the North Sea in the Netherlands in June 2016. In addition to massive threats like the Garbage Patch, ocean animals face other dangers, from overfishing to pol- lution to the rising temperatures and sea levels caused by climate change. Read on for profiles of how four groups of these animals—sharks, turtles, coral, and fish—are impacted by these threats, as well as how people are trying to help them. You may be inspired to pitch in, too—water is the basis of life, and our survival as a species depends on the health of our oceans.

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