Ocean in Red

Did you know it snows in the ocean? In the deep ocean, marine snow also known as "ocean dandruff" is a continuous shower of mostly organic detritus falling from the upper layers of the water column. It is a significant means of exporting energy from the light-rich photic zone to the aphotic zone below, which is referred to as the ‘biological pump’. Marine snow can be an important food source for organisms living in the aphotic zone, particularly for those which live very deep in the water column. 

In this modern world, we have a new ocean snow: micro plastics. A recent model found that 99.8 percent of plastic that entered the ocean since 1950 had sunk below the first few hundred feet of the ocean. Scientists have found 10,000 times more microplastics on the seafloor than in contaminated surface waters. These micro plastics enter the biodiversity of the food chain, meaning that all life in the sea now contains micro plastics. 

This mural highlights human entanglement and subsequent process of environmental degradation. We must attempt to rise out of the destructive cycle we have built around us. The plastic that enters the oceans and water ways ultimately ends up inside our bodies also. Statistics state that we now consume a credit card’s worth of plastic every week.

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