This coming weekend, the world is celebrating Ocean's Day to celebrate the beauty of our oceans and to show the world that we need to take better care of our oceans! About 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by oceans so it is very important to do our best to help keep them clean! Also, more than 97% of all of our planets water is contained in the ocean, so it is not only important to save our oceans for the fish but for ourselves too!

This week, our students learned about all of the pollution going on in our oceans! Here are some (not so) fun facts that we discovered:

• Today, there is an island of garbage that is twice the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean! Not only that, but right off the coast of the beautiful Maldives is an island of garbage that is full of all of the garbage from the resorts on the islands!
• About 1 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm-water, and industrial waste are discharged into ocean waters every year!
• A single quart of motor oil can contaminate up to 2 million gallons of drinking water in the oceans!
• Plastic is the most common form of garbage that gets dumped into the ocean, and is the most dangerous because it stays in the water for many, many years!

To show how important the marine life in our oceans are, our students are making 3D models of their favorite sea creatures and will then show how they are affected by pollution, such as plastic. Here is a picture showing the first step of building our models! 

So in honor of World's Ocean Day this weekend, what can you do to help save the ocean?