On January, 29th, our team decided to interview marine biologist David Jones, CEO of Just One Ocean. He first introduced himself and how he went to University in nuclear physics, afterwards he served 17 years in the military as a diver. After serving 17 years around 2013, he went to Korea and listened to a few talks about Ocean pollution and was inspired to make his own organization, Just One Ocean.
After we learned a bit about him, we asked a few questions starting off with how marine life affects the ocean and marine life and he told us about some types of plastics such as nano-plastics, entanglement plastics, and ingestion plastics. Than he told us about how fatty tissue is very suitable for plastics and he told us about how hydrophobic chemicals rise up to the ocean and 70% of plastics float up the to ocean surface and so the hydrophobic chemicals get onto the plastics like it’s a life boat and the plastics enter the fatty tissue of marine animals and the bigger the marine animal, the more toxins it has.
We then talked about what is most affected by microplastics, David then stated that everything is affected by microplastics differently. Then we talked about how microplastics affect the human body. He than said that as of now, it is unknown what the side effects of microplastics are as they haven’t been around for long enough to know for sure. However, he than said how the effects are guaranteed to not be beneficial but how it is incredibly important for people to research about that topic.
Than finally we talked about what was the worst outcome and he said how plastics isn’t even the worst habitat destruction thing in the ocean. Also how a lot of people rely on marine animals as their main source of food and if it keeps going the way it is it could be a disaster. He then stated how people don’t know how much the ocean can withstand and how we can’t filter the ocean so we should keep it in the best condition we can. Then he stated that in the last 10 years, we have produced more than we have for the past 100 years and how microplastics are apart of the ocean and now all we can do is migrate elsewhere.
We then closed out the interview by asking if there was anything else that we should know and he stated about fast fashion and how a majority of clothes made in the fast fashion industry are made out of plastics and how fast fashion are one of if not the biggest micro plastic emitters.
