Pollution | Smithsonian Ocean

An aerial image of river tributaries flowing into the ocean.

Plastic bottles and other marine debris cover a rocky beach in Curacao.

Marine Plastics Overview

Are you a student researching marine plastic or someone looking to learn more about marine plastic? This overview dives into everything to know.

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Featured Content

An oil drilling platform in oil-free water two years after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Overview

Gulf Oil Spill

Midway Atoll, where these photos were taken, is more than 2,000 miles from the nearest land.

Slideshow

Laysan Albatrosses’ Plastic Problem

Fish swim around the wreck of the HMT Bedfordshire, an Arctic fishing trawler that was converted into an anti-submarine warship during World War II, and sunk off the coast of North Carolina.

Article

Underwater WWII Wrecks – Pollution or Cultural Heritage?

Jellyfish produce mucus, especially when stressed, which can interact with oil and break it down. This moon jellyfish is sloughing off mucus that has mixed with droplets of oil.

Article

How Jellyfish Break Down Oil After a Spill

On coral reefs fish are important links in the food chain that sustains higher-order predators (including humans) and keeps everything in balance.

Article

Fish Get Risky Around Oil

Are You An Educator?

At Smithsonian Ocean, we have lesson plans, activities, and resources to help you engage your students in the wonders of our oceans.

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Pollution Articles

One-meter-tall plastic drifters are released into the Gulf of Mexico in 2012. Over 300 of these drifters were released and their location information was sent to researchers every five minutes through GPS satellite.

Article

CARTHE Drifters: Where does oil go when it is spilled?

A view out of the tiny window of the Johnson-Sea-Link submersible.

Article

How Methane Fueled a Food Web after the Gulf Oil Spill

Cleaning up abandoned fishing nets

Article

Upcycled Ocean Plastic

A photo of plastic trash floating in the water, taken from below the surface.

Article

Witness to a Plastic Invasion

A beaked whale at the ocean's surface

Article

Seeing with Sound: Acoustic monitoring of beaked whales

A C-130 Hercules from the Air Force Reserve Command deploys dispersant into the Gulf of Mexico May 5, 2010, as part of the Deepwater Horizon/BP oil spill response effort.

Article

Building a Better Dispersant

corals of many colors in the deep sea

Article

Deep Gulf Restoration After a Monumental Oil Spill

A school of mahi mahi.

Article

From Larvae to Adults – Finding Impacts of an Oil Spill on Mahi-Mahi

Illustration of Robotic Glider Evading Fishing Nets

Slideshow

Robotic Ocean Explorer

Purple and blue thumbnail of ocean plants of some sort.

Video

Impacts of Marine Debris

Mark Dodd, a wildlife biologist from Georgia's Department of Natural Resources, surveying oiled sargassum seaweed in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

Slideshow

The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, Two Years Later

The Exxon Valdez oil spill occurred on March 24, 1989 when an oil tanker grounded on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound. It spilled almost 11 million gallons of crude oil, which reached 1,300 miles of coastline. The spill's remote location, accessib

Article

Five Questions for Richard Carson, Natural Resource Economist