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TechnoratiTwo men set sail to call attention to the 100 million tons of plastic flotsam fouling the world's oceans.
On the first of June, two men and a rabbit set sail from the port of Long Beach, bound for Hawaii, on a raft made of junk. Their cabin is the cockpit of a Cessna 310, white with a blue racing stripe, salvaged from the desert. It floats on a system of handmade pontoons -- 15,000 plastic bottles held together with recycled nets -- propelled by currents and wind. If it sounds dangerous and makeshift, that's the point. The pilots of Junk, as the vessel is called, want to get your attention.
They are Dr. Marcus Eriksen, director of research and education at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, and Joel Paschal, a former employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (The rabbit was abandoned early on -- to a safe home, not the depths -- after proving a less than seaworthy companion.) Their cause is alerting the world to the fouling of our oceans by plastic debris, and Junk is the poster child ( www.junkraft.com).
Plastic flotsam -- 100 million tons of it -- already litters the oceans of the world. Another 60 billion tons of plastics will be produced this year alone. A particularly dense accumulation of debris can be found in a holding pattern 1,000 miles off the California coast, in an area known as the central North Pacific gyre, the calm core of a convergence of four major ocean currents rotating clockwise under a large high-pressure zone. What gets in there can be trapped for decades.
The buildup of plastics in the gyre is estimated to span 5 million square miles. That's the equivalent of the area of the United States -- all 50 states -- plus India. Some of the debris at the surface floats, some is "neutrally buoyant," suspended just below the waves, and some hovers even deeper. Some is apparent and recognizable -- water bottles, balloons, degraded buoys -- but over time, these objects break down into smaller and smaller plastic pieces until they become particulate, invisible to the naked eye. (And small enough to be ingested by fish and filter feeders, as the larger pieces are by birds and turtles.) Also, the central gyre is so vast that even a devastating quantity of visible debris will appear relatively diffuse. There's no observable "plastic island," no obvious "garbage patch."
To study the plastics in the gyre is costly and time consuming. Sailing through the region, a journey that can only be undertaken at certain times of the year, takes a full month. Eriksen and Paschal made their first gyre voyage in January, captained by Algalita founder Charles Moore, who has studied the area for more than a decade. Moore's work has shown that, in parts of the central gyre, plastics outweigh surface zooplankton 6 to 1. Put bluntly: That's more trash than life. As Moore puts it, "The constituency of ocean water has been fundamentally altered."
For many, it's hard to feel for slimy protozoans the way we do for a polar bear drifting on an orphaned block of ice. But we should. Plankton, salps, jellyfish -- these are fundamental creatures of the sea. You might say the effects of plastic flotsam are like the flotsam itself: Some are visible -- the 100,000 marine mammals killed each year, carcasses of Laysan albatross full of colored bottle tops and lighters -- but, all the more sinister, some are not.
Certain plastic resins contain potentially toxic additives, such as bisphenol A, that can leach into surrounding water. They serve as magnets for toxic substances already present in the water, such as PCBs and DDT, which accumulate as they move up the food chain. Particles of plastic also act as hosts for invasive species, carrying them to new regions of the sea, further upsetting the marine ecosystem.
About 80% of the plastic debris in the oceans gets there from land. It isn't dumped off ships. Rather, it washes from our beaches and streets and highways, through storm drains and into streams and rivers. According to a 2006 article in this newspaper, the trash that flows down the Los Angeles River each year would fill the Rose Bowl two stories high.
California's State Water Resources Control Board defines "trash" as debris that can be caught by a 5-millimeter mesh screen, but much of the plastic that enters the ocean is smaller than that. Most common are beads of polystyrene and "nurdles," pre-production plastic pellets overlooked during the manufacturing process. What's worse, in a 2005 study of local plastics industry work sites, Moore found that screens on storm drains, where present, were frequently removed during rain -- when debris moves most quickly toward the sea -- to prevent flooding. Screens are not enough. Plastic litter must be stopped at its source, not on the brink of a watershed.
Eriksen and Paschal know this, and they want you to know it too. Junk hasn't made it very far as yet, delayed by bad weather and subsequent repairs (the ocean had managed to unscrew hundreds of caps from the bottles), but now they're back on course, leaving Guadalupe Island off the coast of Baja California, and hoping that you'll tell a friend.
Margaux Wexberg Sanchez, a writer, teaches journalism at UC Irvine.
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times
20 Comments so far
Show AllCan we make the nurdles clump up and somehow sequester CO2 and sink?
GALEN: That's why so many can't wrap their minds around the premise there very well MAY have been other civilizations of technological excellence who came before us... like Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria.
That's the way to check out ~John Freeman~, in our sleep. That's how my dad went, sound asleep and in serene peace.
The rest of the people in the car went out with a bang, while screaming their brains out.
HI~HYBRIDOMA~ That's correct, we use our money for guns, ammo and bombs and it is all under the firm control of a very few. They have the money to insure who is elected, or put in charge of a country. Occasionally some "misfit" comes along and screws up the world rulers plans. Two who come to mind are JFK and Fidel Castro. ___ Not sure about JFK.
I love the idea of the human race reduced to about 600 million. Less would be better. No, I am not planning on being one of them. I got a vasectomy in my 20's, am leaving no children behind (!!)and am planning on making my get-away from this mess in due course....hopefully in my sleep
There are so many serious issues which adversely effect all of mankind and all other animal life on Earth. This issue is just one of many.
Some others are, man made atomic radiation and long life radio-active byproducts, such as DU use for weapons, which will be polluting the Earth for billions of years. The destruction of our planet's rain forests, use of long life pesticides, other chemicals such as trichloretholene which poison our aquifers, lakes and rivers. The threat of an atomic war, etc.
There are two serious problems which soar above the rest and are our most important issues, or they should be. The first is the pollution of our oceans with man-made products, chemicals, atomic waste and plastics.
The reason that is so serious is, we owe our very lives to a microscopic plant life named "phytoplankton". Those tiny floating plants produce most of the oxygen, both in our atmosphere and in our waters, required to sustain life. The Ocean's phytoplanton are dying off and the most resonable reason is from man made pollution and very possibly climate change is not helping there either.
http://www.whyplankton.com
The second and perhaps the most pressing serious issue is global warming. Global warming by itself will not do us in, it is what global warming is causing that will do us in. As the Arctic's perma-frost thaws, methane gas which has been safely locked up in the ice for millions of years will be loosed into our atmosphere which will add to the "excess" Co2 already in our atmosphere.
Methane is 25 times as potent as a Greenhouse gas as Co2 is, or 2,400% more potent. The Arctic methane release will not be our death knoll either, it will however "trigger" global warming such as most have never dreampt of, with average world temperatures soaring by tens of degrees.
That will be our end and we may have ten years or maybe twenty or more to attempt to reverse the situation. We may not have any time left, we may have already done it.
When temps rise near ten degrees, the really massive amount of methane gas, which is presently locked up in our ocean's floors will release and when that happens almost all life on Earth, down to the microbal level will be snuffed out within hours. Some bacteria and simple life forms such as worms and deep sea life may survive, even some phytoplankton may survive.
If the ocean's phytoplankton don't survive our stupidity, Earth may very well become a larger twin of Mars.
Reference? ____ Michael J. Benton's book titled, "When Life Nearly Died" and or, just ask for Arctic methange gas on the net, there are hundreds of credible articles on the subject. What I've just posted is not MY opinions.
KEM PATRICK, my thoughts are the same. Get out there and clean it up. Where's the money to come from? That's my only question. It's too bad so much of our tax dollars go into financing the production of weapons and destruction. If only a fraction of this were dedicated to such work, it could be done. But as long as we depend on oil, the military is going to continue to fight for resources such as oil; and water seems to be the next resource we'll be fighting over. Remove the need for so much oil to keep the economy going and you have less reason for war. Remove war for resources, and we free up plenty of money for other needs.
But we do have so many other needs that are also losing out because of military spending. We all know the list: schools, hospitals, health care, infrastructure, the "Superfund Sites" that have stopped being cleaned up, and on and on...
With the right leadership, these things could be addressed. If only we could start today to learn to live without oil and begin to live using new technologies that don't harm the environment and are renewable. The Apollo Project makes so much sense. It would create new jobs here in the USA that would stay in the USA. Environmentalists joining with the vanishing Blue Collar workforce to begin a new industrial age makes so much sense. The only thing stopping it is the oil industry and weak leadership.
It can be done, just as we began the Apollo space program and made it to the moon. The right kind of leadership is what the people need and we could accomplish the unavoidable change that will be needed as oil becomes harder and harder to get. The sooner we start, the better.
I still haven't lost all hope that we can make these changes.
"Plastic litter must be stopped at its source, not on the brink of a watershed"
Ever see the plastic bag litter in your neighborhood. A neighbor's tree routinely gets a few stuck in it every year. Wal-Mart appears to have seen the bad PR it's traditional blue bags were causing when folks saw those blue things stuck everywhere and has changed the color to the universal white.
There are corn based plastics for those that have to use plastic products. Canvas bags for the store.
I'm also the irritating snot who takes items out of the packaging at the store and makes them dispose of it and help me get the darn stuff free of plastic.
"If humanity were to just *vanish*, within 250 years, no recognizable human cities would remain. No roads. Nothing."
Really? The existence of ruins thousands of years old begs to differ.
I have read the book "The World Without Us". A lot of work went into studying what would happen if we were gone, and how long it would take, many of the studies seem done at taxpayer expense.
I got news for you, they are planning a world without us. Life will go on, but only for 600 million. The other 6 billion are toast. They have done their homework. Just have to decide on on how they are going to kill us off. They have so many ways. The Prince of Genocide (Philip) once said he hoped he could be reincarnated and come back as a virus to eliminate most of the human parasites.
Actually they had a documentary on TV not too long back called "The World Without Us" . It must have been premised on that very book.
I must say it did not look like a bad place to be at all.
Read 'The World Without Us'. It's an eye-opener about how little human achievement matters to nature.
If humanity were to just *vanish*, within 250 years, no recognizable human cities would remain. No roads. Nothing.
After 5000 years, the only signs we were ever here would be nuclear waste, the granulated remains of plastics, and Neil Armstrong's footprints on the moon...and those few signs will linger for geological eons.
Something to think about?
>>Lethally. It's been said "man is the only beast that fouls his own nest." Indeed.
While I understand the sentiment, I think part of the problem is that MAN considers the entire world as HIS nest.
I think man needs a bit more humility.
I can't remember who posted important articles linking the end of oil, and/or its increasingly high price, on the development of plastics for things like drugs (packaging?). In any case, seems to me mankind has a major recycling project right outside its oceanic doorstep. There's PLENTY of plastic there to be put to use if the lack of petroleum makes this substance "scarce." And it would save the lives of so many sea creatures.
In the Florida Keys the pioneering work of Craig and Deevon Carillo was acknowledged in ecological communities. Besides making sure buoys were placed at sea to protect the fragile sea grass, they kept track of the bleaching of the coral reefs, a huge tourist attraction, incredibly beautiful, and the zone of fish hatcheries. They also educated the public about plastic bags and debris ending up in the ocean where too often resembling jelly fish, the plastic was taken for food by rare birds and sea turtles. Lethally. It's been said "man is the only beast that fouls his own nest." Indeed.
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If it were up to me, which it is not, I'd have a fleet of those now silent fishing trawlers netting up that plastic. It may take a few years to collect it all, but we could do it. Net it and compress it, then have barges to bring in all of the collected plastic and use it for something. Maybe fill in the hole we are preparing in Nevada to store atomic waste.
Whatever, we actually should clean it up, put those fishermen back to work. It is a crime to not do so.
hellodarling - all of the above, plus going all out to keep a brain-dead woman alive while children were dying because their parents couldn't afford the cost of trying to save their lives; go to extremes for an unborn fetus, then don't give a damn about the baby once it's born; believe the earth will heal itself regardless of the damage we do to it, and on and on ...
... get it yet? I've got a warped sense of humor.
get the churches engaged??
the same churches that believe that Jesus would vote republican, drive a hummer, hate pot smokers, and support the war???
wtf is that gonna accomplish?
Oh yea ..garbage in the oceans and what it is doing to the health of sea life and ultimately us. What a catastrophe. Oil based plastics suffocating everything. Recycling plastics?
Should get all the churches engaged in this one - after all, suicide is a sin against God, and we're certainly trying hard to kill ourselves, aren't we.