How does littering affect marine wildlife?
Littering has become a much bigger problem in the world than it used to be. It has begun to even affect the wildlife around us all, especially marine wildlife. The litter has been getting into the water from many different ways, it can be flushed down the toilet, left on the road and washed into drains and waterways when it rains, and the most common way would be dropped directly into the water by boaters. Plastics have the most affects on the marine wildlife and the plastic makes up over 60% of marine debris. Plastics are also the longest lasting. A plastic bag will last 200 to 400 years, where a plastic bottle takes about 450 years to fully break down. These plastics are not only outliving the marine wildlife but it is also killing them.
In August of 2000 there was a whale found washed up on the shore near Cairns, Australia. When they did an autopsy on the whale to find out why it had washed up onto the shore they found its stomach was tightly packed with different kinds of plastics. Almost 200 square feet of plastic supermarket bags, food packages, bottles, and more was the cause of that whale’s death. Marine animals mistake plastic for food and they eat it, most do not have issues when it comes to eating it, but digesting it is the problem. Food needs to break down before it can be fully digested and these plastics will not break down causing it to fill up more and more until the creature dies.
Turtles are one of the more common marine animals people are aware of that are greatly affected by plastics. When the turtles are babies they will get stuck in the plastic that holds a case of pop together. They will end up entangled in it as a baby and when they start to grow it ends up causing deformities to the turtles shell. The turtle will no longer be able to grow in the area the plastic is but everywhere else it will. But it is not just the turtles that these plastic traps are harming, many animals in and around the sea are dying from them as well. Seagulls and other birds that stay around marine wildlife are getting caught in them as well. They will get their beak stuck shut in them and end up suffocating from it or dying from starvation. Seals have also been known to get caught in them and in the late 1970’s, scientists found that plastic entanglement was killing around 40,000 seals a year which ended up leading to a 4-6% drop in the seal population.
60% of marine debris is plastic products alone. This marine debris is including oil pollution, trash, fishing supplies, anything you could imagine and still 60% is just plastic products. Marine wildlife is struggling greatly due to the amount of plastics that could all be fixed by simply recycling and no longer littering. Whales have been beached, turtles have become entangled and caused deformities, and sea birds have been suffocated.

http://www.100days100paintings.com/how-does-plastic-in-our-waters-affect-marine-life/
http://www.whoi.edu/science/B/people/kamaral/plasticsarticle.html