Name: Fox Sullivan
Social Justice Group: Microplastics (B)
Date of Fieldwork: January 8, 2025
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Valorie Tovar
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:
Yesterday at lunch we interviewed marine biologist Valorie Tovar over zoom. Tovar works with the Loggerhead Marine Life Center Education located in West Palm Beach, Florida. They are dedicated to cleaning up beaches and helping injured sea turtles who have ingested microplastics.
When we were interviewing her we learned a lot. She told us about the ways that microplastics can affect Marine Life negatively. Microplastics can be cancer inducing, and the ocean is filled with them. This makes it really easy for them to be consumed by animals. Scientists have even found microplastics in plankton!
Most of the microplastics being consumed come from the garbage patches. Garbage patches are areas in the ocean that have tons of garbage in them. A lot of Marine Life currently live in these garbage patches. When we were on zoom, we learned that they are formed because of ocean current patterns. When she was talking to us she said “the currents connect us.” meaning that the ocean currents go all around the world. She told us this story of how one time she found an octopus trap on the beach in Florida that had washed up all the way from Africa.
Microplastics don’t only affect Marine Life though, they affect humans too. Another thing Tovar told us about was how microplastics can also end up in humans. She told us that in 2021 scientists found microplastics inside a human. This is because when fishermen catch fish who have eaten microplastics, we eat those fish, meaning we eat the microplastics too. Another way microplastics affect us – we learned – is because 50 percent of the air we breathe comes from the ocean. This means that without a clean ocean we can’t have clean air.
After she had told us this we wanted help, so we asked for some tips to get trash out of the ocean. We learned that some of the best ways were to educate people, reduce the amount of plastic we use, and make sustainability affordable. What she meant by making sustainability affordable was, a lot of people in low income communities cannot afford to get organic things because they are more expensive. If we change this less trash will go into the oceans, less animals will die, less plastic will end up inside of us, and the air will be cleaner.
