Pollution can be stopped only if each individual learns to value the importance of nature and life. Many water-polluting events are ship accidents, which causes oil spill. Other spills are simply factory waste that consists of various chemicals and toxic waste. To stop pollution, we must all do our part to try to be clean, buy from only ecologically responsible companies and follow the anti-pollution rules strictly, for a cleaner, more natural ocean, for our children and their children.

Crude oil (petroleum) consists of components, which have widely differing boiling points. Petroleum is usually a dark brown, smelly liquid and it is about as thick as engine oil. It is largely composed of hydrocarbons (compounds of carbon and hydrogen), but there is an appreciable proportion of sulfur compounds and there are trace concentrations of metals such as vanadium and nickel. Oil finds its way into oceans from tanker wrecks, drilling operations, mini spills, atmospheric deposition and natural leakage.

Mini spills include leaks from pipes and so on. Tanker captains often clean the oily holds of their ships with seawater, despite the fact that it is strictly illegal. Some oil aerosols also settle into the sea from the atmosphere. Finally, undersea sources do release some oil without human help. The fate of all this oil is determined by its physical, chemical and biological properties.

The largest spill from drilling started on June 3, 1979, at an offshore oil well owned by Pemex, a national Mexican Oil Company. It took 9 months to stop it, by which 3.1 million barrels (440 000 tonnes) of oil had been spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

Every individual pollutes the environment everyday without realizing it. Even plastics and wood floating in the sea pollutes the ocean. It harms the ocean more in physical, rather than in chemical ways. Many marines organisms such as fishes confuse plastic for food and eat them, or simply get tangled up in them and die. Also, the production of plastics involves many noxious and polluting chemicals. Of course, pollution in the form of chemicals can build up in sea life and accumulate, travelling up the food chain.

The ocean can get contaminated with nuclear waste by illegal dumping, atomic bomb tests or accidents aboard nuclear powered vessels or at nuclear reactors near coastlines. The soluble components of radioactive waste are dispersed into the ocean at large over relatively short time periods. The insoluble wastes will fall to the seabed and, locally affect marine life in that location through their radiation.