Assemblymember Krekorian on Plastics in the Ocean

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

In this Web Report Assemblyman Paul Krekorian (D-Burbank) talks about his efforts to protect our California's beaches and the marine life from Marine Debris. AB 258 is an important ocean protection bill that will reduce the amount of plastics debris that flows into our ocean. Plastics in our seas has become a serious problem that is proving devastating to marine ecosystems and is putting California's $45 billion ocean-dependent economy in jeopardy.

The world's oceans are being inundated with plastic marine debris. In fact, one thousand miles west of San Francisco, an enormous garbage mass measuring over 5 million square miles circulates in the Pacific Ocean, increasing by the day with man-made detritus. Research indicates that as much as 90% of this floating marine debris is plastic in concentrations so high, plastics outnumber plankton by a ratio of 6 to 1. Recent projections estimate that over 45,000 pieces of plastic are floating on every square mile of the ocean.