Sea Pollution Science Activity

Did you know that the sea around the UK is home to more than 8000 different species of plants and animals? However, this wonderful marine environment is being ruined by pollution, including rubbish left on beaches, sewage, and chemical and oil spills.

Image of a metal tray with sand, blue water, plastic fish and rubbish to show the effects of pollution on marine life.

What is pollution?

Pollution is anything which is introduced into an environment that causes harm. For example abandoned nets that animals can get caught in, oil leakages cause huge amount of ecological damage and waste products from plastic production build up in food chains leading to as yet unknown consequences in humans.

In order to demonstrate pollution on a very basic level, I set up a pretend ocean.

Sea Pollution Demonstration

A clear bowl or vase

Plastic fish

Black food colouring

Litter

Shells or sand

Water

How to set up a sea pollution demonstration

Set up your mini ocean with lovely, clean water.

Glass jar with shells in the bottom covered in water with plastic fish attached to string to look like they are swimming for a pollution demonstration

Add some rubbish and black food colouring ( to represent oil/sewage )

How different does your mini ocean look after the pollution has been added?

Glass jar with plastic fish and shells, the clear water has been made murky with the addition of black food colouring and plastic rubbish has been added too.

Whilst doing this activity, we talked about how litter and pollution might impact fish and other marine life, and where we had seen litter recently.

Another idea is to set up a beach scene and then add pollution to the sea and shore. I know which version of the beach I would rather spend time at.

beach scene small play for a pollution demonstration

What can we do about pollution?

Buying local products reduces the need to ship items around the world.

Buy cleaning products that use natural/biodegradable ingredients.

Recycle as much as you can, and never drop litter. Things like plastic bottle tops or balloons can be fatal to animals, who may mistake them for food.

Can you think of anything else you can do to help save our planet from the enormous amount of rubbish and pollution humans create?

This illustration shows visually how much plastic rubbish we have created since 1950 and where it has gone.

Make a plastic pledge, thinking about how you can reduce the amount of plastic you use.

Make a Plastic Pledge