Religion Reflection Assignment

There is nothing like that moment when your feet sink into the cool, wet sand and the smell of sea salt hits your nose. The warm , humid air rustles your hair and the frigid water sloshes around your ankles and drops seashells between your toes. The home to bottle nose dolphins, Atlantic pelicans, Loggerhead sea turtles, and Moon Jellyfish that frequently wash up on shore, this place is dream-like even in March when I am there every year. The stars are bright, the sand is white and seashells are abundant. The only thing that you can hear is the crashing of waves and, in early morning, the singing of the dolphins that play in the white caps. Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is the most beautiful place on earth.
But while this beauty of the beaches brings thousands of tourists to Horry County every year, because of Western society this oceanic ecosystem is under siege. Back in the time of the Waccamaw natives, the people and the wildlife lived in harmony with each other, because they understood that one does not control the other. But now, pollution, over fishing and bycatching is destroying the habitat of 230, 000 species of marine life.
Every year the United States of America produces 15 billion pounds of plastic and only about 1 billion is recycled. The other 14 billion has to go somewhere. While a lot of it goes into landfill sites around the country, a significant proportion is dumped into waterways and eventually the ocean with rain water because someone left it laying on the ground. Thrown down carelessly and forgotten. Many animals mistake this toxic, plastic garbage for a light snack and it eventually kills the animals by accumulating in the digestive tract of the creature. Also, garbage like the plastic rings off of pop cans and plastic bags get caught or tangled up in the fins or around the mouths and necks of dolphins, porpoises and sea turtles. Strangling them, drowning them, or starving them. All this because of someone too lazy to put something in a trash can. What a cruel way to die.
Over fishing on the other hand, is completely intentional. Most companies that you can find in the frozen section at your local grocery store over fish. Over fishing happens when more fish than needed is caught. They target one species of fish and harvest them until numbers are so low, so they move on to another species. Imagine factory trawlers with fishnets as large as four football fields and how many fish that can wipe out in one go. Not only does this method of fishing kill of giant schools of fish and cause a collapse in the oceanic ecosystem, decimating an entire ocean food chain, but it also causes people to lose their jobs and businesses such as small fisheries to close.
But not only the targeted fish that these trawlers seek out are in danger. These giant fish nets and longline fishing techniques are a death sentence to whales, sharks, dolphins, seals, birds, and sea turtles. Bycatching is when unintended marine life is caught and killed with the targeted group of fish and every year upwards of 300 000 cetaceans and a staggering 100 million sharks of all sizes are killed from these greedy companies. Whenever a marine animal that was not supposed to be there is caught in a net it is discarded overboard, already dead or severely injured. Not only is this travesty cruel to the animals that are killed, but it is completely possible to reduce the amount of bycatching. Specialized and selective nets can be substituted to reduce the amount of unwanted animals that are dragged up and pingers can be used to deter dolphins from hanging around fish trawlers.