Let's talk trash: discourse in the media concerning marine pollution

Environmental issues have long been considered hot topics in global media, however the marine environment is rarely discussed. Media tends to focus on the more tangible terrestrial environment that which we can relate to. My primary example for comparison here is the sheer volume of articles relating to the fate of Cecil the lion. The global attention and environmentalism inspired by the loss of a single organism from a single species is astounding.

When it comes to the marine environment, an entire sphere of the Earth, global media seems reluctant to discuss it.

Recently the issue of plastic in the worlds oceans has been exposed by global media, highlighting what many marine scientists discovered as early as the 1970s (CNN, 2014). This shift in media focus only came as a response to the recent downings of airplanes in the oceans, when satellite driven searches mistook vast areas of marine pollution as 'sighted debris' of the wreckages hindering search attempts. Plastic pollution has remained for some time since at the forefront of media, with Time Magazine and other newspapers releasing articles concerning the issue (Time Magazine, 2015) .

This isn't the first time that the scale of plastic pollution has been written about in the fish eye focus of popular media. Captain Charles Moore has been writing and campaigning about the problem since discovering the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 1997 (Algalita, 2015). He has since explored more than 40,000 miles of the North Pacific Ocean, highlighting its plight to the media. The following video from TED.com illustrates Moore's research.