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Save the Sound!

  • Beach Pollutants
    Beach Pollutants
  • Water Pollutants
    Water 
  • Oil Spills
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  • Invasive Species
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  • Habitat Loss
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Beach Pollutants

Beach pollutants are extremely harmful to the environment. When you or other people leave plastics or other objects on the beach, they have a serious harm. First of all, they make the beach look trashy, plus its a mess to clean up. Second of all, it harms the marine life there. Second, the tide pools might now have chemicals in them that cause the sea stars, anemones, and other life to die. Thirdly, it harms the marine environment further out in the water. Seals can be strangled by plastic back, or choked by 6-pack soda wrappers. In the end, it turns out to be a much bigger problem than, say, throwing a bottle away. So take a second of your day, and throw away a bottle, or a wrapper, or another piece of litter. It could save a life.

Water Pollutants

Water pollutants are also extremely harmful to the environment. They can cover a sea creature's head, rendering them unable to breath. They can wrap themselves around a marine mammal's throat, causing them to choke. There is even a place in called "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch", where the ocean is covered in trash! Fortunately, you can help. All you need to do is throw away litter that you might see on the beach (or anywhere else!), and make sure not to contribute to the already overflowing amount of garbage that exists in our waters today. Also, rain can wash pesticides and fertilizers into the Sound, so using eco-friendly products are an excellent alternative. You can also ensure the rain goes through soil before going into a nearby water source. Soil cleans!

Invasive Species

Do you like the look of this Tunicate, or Sea Squirt? Well, although it might look cool, it certainly doesn't do much good for the marine food chain, at least her in the Sound. Sea Squirts are an invasive species to the Puget Sound, meaning that they were somehow imported here by humans, and then started taking over the habitat. Take starfish; if an aggressive species were to come and start taking over the rocks and eating the mussels and the barnacles, then the starfish would have nowhere else to go and nothing to eat. The barnacles and mussels wouldn't have enough time to reproduce before they got eaten, but the invasive species would be breeding like crazy. It's just an overall bad situation. There are also other invasive species, like the marine European Green Crab, and the freshwater Crayfish.

Habitat Loss

Another one of the major issues that affects Puget Sound wildlife is habitat loss. We as humans have been expanding, expanding, and expanding, leaving little room for wildlife to live. When you combine the effects of humans settling and building, and invasive species taking over, the native animals wind up having quite the amount of trouble, trying to survive, reproduce, continue life as they know it. There are national and state parks that set aside land & water for these animals to continue life, but humans are still able to gain access to these parks, leaving these species vulnerable to humans, even in their native habitats. 

Oil & Oil Spills

Oil spills aren't really something that we are directly affected by, here in the sheltered Puget Sound, but we should most certainly be aware of it happening in other places throughout the world. Every animal has a place in the world-wide food web, so when one population of animals is affected in, say, the Gulf of Mexico, the chain links all the way up to Alaska. One thing that we can do here is not pollute the waters by leaking boat oils into Lake Washington, or elsewhere.