Drastic Plastics

    Have you ever looked into a body of water and thought, "what is going on down there?" Well, you're not alone! For at least 10,000 years, humans have been exploring the Earth's big blue oceans, yet we have hardly dipped into the depths! Our oceans cover 3/4 of our home, are almost 4 billion years old, and come from volcanic steam and comet ice, what isn't there to be curious about?

Joakant. Ocean Reefs. 2014.

 In my last STEAM class at GCE, Frontiers, we have been learning all about our deep oceans and the frontiers we are pushing to explore more of it. We have learned about Polynesian Seafarers who explored the oceans around 30,000 years ago, how the oceans are mapped using satellites and gravitational pull, sonar mapping, biogeochemical cycles, ocean salinity, ocean currents, plate tectonics, coral reefs, mangroves, blue carbon, and so much more! (Fun fact, coral is not a plant but a collection of critters called polyps!) We also had a tour of our teacher's nano saline reef! It has so many interesting critters and beautiful coral we got to see in real-time!

    For a good portion of the class, we took a deep dive (hehe) into human impacts on the ocean and marine life exploring topics such as overfishing, ocean acidification, marine pollution, and loss of ecosystems. Which seamlessly led to our AP (Action Project). For this AP we were to write a literature review about an oceanic topic of our choice. A literature review is an overview of the already published works on a specific, usually scientific, topic. Without further delay, here is my literature review on oceanic debris with a focus on plastics!

    This AP was for sure a bit different from the usual GCE projects we do, but I think it is a very useful and important AP to ready ourselves for similar work we will eventually do in college and/or for work. But, needless to say, it was a bit tougher on me to get this AP onto paper since the creativity was tight and the rules were tighter! It has been an amazing challenge to write in a more scholarly tone and do a "college-ish" paper.