In 1970 the awareness of our ocean getting polluted increased and people began to do things about it. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) were created in 1970. Congress also began to take charge and help clean our oceans by passing the Clean Water Act, the Marine Mammal Protection Act, Coastal Zone Management Act, and the Endangered Species Act. These acts are key laws that help protect our ocean from pollution, over fishing, endangerment and many more issues. Even though these acts were established our ocean still remains at risk. Just a few people cannot clean the ocean; there are things all people should be doing to help conserve our ocean. .
One issue that people need to start helping with is sea turtle extinction. Our actions such as egg collecting, hunting for sea turtle meat or shells, accidental capture in fishing nets, damage and loss of important habitat, and marine pollution have an effect that makes sea turtles more vulnerable to extinction. Fishing is the biggest threat to sea turtles today. Sea turtles can be caught in almost any type of fishing net and with the increase in fishing fleets around the world it increases the threats to sea turtles. In the US nets called TEDs are used. This net allows sea turtles to escape but most shrimp to stay in. If these nets were used worldwide then the deaths of sea turtles would decrease. Another way to help out our sea turtles is to stop illegal trading of shells. In some places sea turtle's shells are wanted for making jewelry. Countries do prohibit this but because of lack of funds it is very hard to enforce. When sea turtles hatch on land their instinct is to go towards the reflection of the moon on the sea, but because of coastal increases of industrial businesses, the sea turtles sometimes go towards the light of the city and die. If there weren't so many buildings being built along the coast it could help the problem of extinction of sea turtles.