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Growth of Ocean ‘Garbage Patch’ Alarms Experts
Three-week Pacific voyage highlights ‘shocking’ amount of plastic debris
LOS ANGELES - A tawny stuffed puppy bobs in cold sea water, his four stiff legs tangled in the green net of some nameless fisherman.
The sheer quantity of plastic that accumulates in the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex formed by ocean and wind currents and located 1,000 miles off the California coast, has scientists worried about how it might harm. (Mario Aguilera / Scripps Institution of Oceanogra) It's one of the bigger pieces of trash in a sprawling mass of garbage-littered water, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, where most of the plastic looks like snowy confetti against the deep blue of the north Pacific Ocean.
Most of the trash has broken into bite-sized plastic bits, and scientists want to know whether it's sickening or killing the small fish, plankton and birds that ingest it.
During their August fact-finding expedition, a group of University of California scientists found much more debris than they expected. The team announced their observations at a San Diego press conference Thursday.
"It's pretty shocking - it's unusual to find exactly what you're looking for," said Miriam Goldstein, who led fellow researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego on the three-week voyage.
While scientists have documented trash's harmful effects for coastal marine life, there's little research on garbage patches, which were first explored extensively by self-trained ocean researcher Charles Moore just a decade ago. There's also scant research on the marine life at the bottom of the food chain that inhabit the patch.
But even the weather-beaten, sunbleached plastic flakes that are smaller than a thumbnail can be alarming.
"They're the right size to be interacting with the food chain out there," Goldstein said.
Bottlecaps, bags and wrappers
The team also netted occasional water bottles with barnacles clinging to the side. Some of the trash had labels written in Chinese and English, hints of the long journeys garbage takes to arrive mid-ocean.
Plastic sea trash doesn't biodegrade and often floats at the surface. Bottlecaps, bags and wrappers that end up in the ocean from the wind or through overflowing sewage systems can then drift thousands of miles.
The sheer quantity of plastic that accumulates in the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex formed by ocean and wind currents and located 1,000 miles off the California coast, has the scientists worried about how it might harm the sea creatures there.
A study released earlier this month estimated that thousands of tons of plastic debris wind up in the oceans every year, and some of that has ended up in the swirling currents of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Katsuhiko Saido, a chemist at Nihon University, Chiba, Japan, told the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society last week that plastic actually does decompose, releasing potentially toxic chemicals that can disrupt the functioning of hormones in animals and marine life.
'Afraid'
The Scripps team hopes the samples they gathered during the trip nail down answers to questions of the trash's environmental impact. Does eating plastic poison plankton? Is the ecosystem in trouble when new sea creatures hitchhike on the side of a water bottle?
Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish, and one paper cited by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates 100,000 marine mammals die trash-related deaths each year.
The scientists hope their data gives clues as to the density and extent of marine debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger.
"We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution.
Only humans are to blame for ocean debris, Goldstein said. In a blog entry posted a day before the science ship arrived in Newport, Ore., she wrote the research showed her the consequences of humanity's footprint on nature.
"Seeing that influence just floating out here in the middle of nowhere makes our power painfully obvious, and the consequences of the industrial age plain," she wrote. "It's not a pretty sight."
46 Comments so far
Show All'only humans are to blame for ocean debris'............
and some people think animals are stupid..................
oh no. Humans are not responsible at all.
I have found research conducted by WLP* Bio-ethonics. it clearly shows a REDUCTION of garbage in the NP Gyre since 1975. this proves without a doubt that the plastics were there long before and will be there again. And don't for get their study on the quasi-syndronization of plastic aglomeration and sunspot activity. you all are just a bunch of scare mongers.
*(We Love Plastics)
yours in satire, GGOTG
lets get big ships to go out there
harvest all this garbage and we'll burn it in incerators as fuel for electricity
this will save our other fuel sources and clean up the oceans
You can scoop up the surface stuff but the majority of it is underwater, where if you drag a net you are going to scoop up sea life as well.
Yeah, prevention in this case would have been worth more than a ton of cure.
The "burn it" idea's going to smell pretty bad, too: the smoke from a lot of that stuff's quite a lot more toxic than coal or gasoline fumes.
""We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there," "
Damn, I had no idea there'd be another one.
"A study released earlier this month estimated that thousands of tons of plastic debris wind up in the oceans every year..."
I wonder who sponsored and paid for that study. I think that if the government paid for that study the money would have been better spent trying to clean up the trash instead of studying it. We already know that there's garbage out there...
Google and ye shall receive...
UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla and Project Kaisei, a nonprofit based in San Francisco.
joanelyia August 28th, 2009 10:01 am.....The government must constantly justify it's bloated bureauocracy, lest we realize they ultimately have no value except to create war, misery and keep the elite in power and the masses powerless.
Well it's not just government that does this. What business launches into a project or expansion without studying it first?
zmann August 28th, 2009 11:14 am.............A business studies something for potential profit. The government studies something to determine if there is political capital to be gained. If they really gave a crap, they would have started to clean it up MANY years ago.
Never Give Up, ---- How does this statement square with your position on Single Payer, or do you oppose that????? Social Security and Medicare are part of "Big Government" I have yet to miss a Social Security payment and the overhead there is somewhere in the 3-4% range. That seems to me to be quite favorable compared to the Private Sector's 30+% markup on health coverage.
"Never camp downstream from a cattle crossing" is sound advice on a cattle drive. "Don't shit where you eat" is sound sanitation advice. Do we actually think that filling our oceans with garbage is a sound idea. How about sinking warships filled with dangerous toxic chemicals (fuel, oil, etc.) or nuclear fuel and/or waste? The oceans allow our planet to sustain life. Just as we have destroyed the salt marshes where the fish we used to eat used to breed, and wonder why there are so few fish left, so too we are destroying the oceans. What greedy bastards we humans are. Maybe we don't deserve to survive. I guess we are living in "interesting times". I'd hate to think the "end-of-times" people are right, but we may destroy ourselves simply by making the planet so polluted that it cannot sustain human "civilization".
"Do we actually think that filling our oceans with garbage is a sound idea. How about sinking warships filled with dangerous toxic chemicals (fuel, oil, etc.) or nuclear fuel and/or waste?"
Plenty of that from WW1 and WW2, plus the several nuclear submarines that have been lost over the years. Lovely, huh?
This is an organization that is trying to grow, please visit and support:
http://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org
"Only humans are to blame for ocean debris, Goldstein said."
Surely, plasticization is a natural, cyclic geologic phenomenon, and not attributable to human industrial behavior, therefore warranting no change in such...do no core samples reflect previous periods?
we already have plastic fruit...some plastic fish would set well alongside on the plastic plate...here are your plastic utensils...bon appetit...
Thanks for the chuckle.
Joe
Maybe the USA should invade it and claim it for 'Merka"
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBRquiS1pis
Most people don't shit on the living room couch. I have heard of insane persons who eat their own feces.
Did you know that human milk contains more toxins than the previous relatively honest EPA in the sixties would allow in water?
The EPA didn't exist in the 60's, it was proposed by Richard Nixon in 1970. However, your statement about toxins in breast milk, even if the date were a bit later, is most certainly correct. I read a about a study that took place fairly recently on a number of "average" families living in the Dallas/Ft.Worth metroplex that found something like 159 toxic chemicals in the blood and tissue samples of the participants. These chemicals come from sources such as food preservatives, leeching from plastic bottles, breathing polluted air, etc. The results of the study were truly disgusting as well as frightening!
I have a potential solution. Re-fit a few ocean carriers with equipment to "fish" the plastic from the ocean, clean, dry & separate the plastics, grind it, and remold it with a plastic injection equipment on board the ship. Use solar power and make plastic composite building materials to ship back to the mainland... estimates put the quantity at over 200 billion pounds of plastic... so let's use it to our advantage...
How do you sift out plastic and leave the sea life?
It's a Big, Big Ocean!
Big, big nets with itty bitty holes.
Ah... if only!
I am surprised that no-one has asked the question:
With all that sunbleached (ie white) flakes of plastic floating on at near the surface, what will be the effect on the ocean's albedo and resulting temperature?
ahhh...good idea...we need to expand this floating debris, but strategically...
float a bunch of light-colored plastic crap around in the arctic where the ice used to be...maybe big, plastic polar bears and belugas and plastic seals, to encourage continued tourism...even plastic penguins (belly up)...who cares if they're not native: they're plastic!
Problem is, these 'dead zones' are near the doldrums, not the poles. The plastic would not stay at the poles and would migrate towards the equator, meaning we would have to continuously inject plastic into polar waters.
Meanwhile, the crap piles up at the equator......
There was recently an article on here concerning the record high temperature of the ocean.
http://www.commondreams.org/
headline/2009/08/20-13
And this one is more to the point.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/15/
science/earth/15brfs-OCEANTEMPERA_BRF.html
The white flakes should be lowering the ocean's temperature. Perhaps there's a factor of 100 too few flakes to make a difference.
i've been called a white flake...perhaps if i tread water in the gyre...
WE ALL NEED TO STOP BUYING IT!
DO NOT BUY ANYTHING YOU DO NOT TRULY NEED!
STOP!!!!!
Sorry for shouting...
How do we reconcile these?
1.
" . . . scientists want to know whether it's sickening or killing the small fish, plankton and birds that ingest it."
2.
"Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish, and one paper cited by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates 100,000 marine mammals die trash-related deaths each year."
The sad part is that this probably is not the author's error.
I recently (finally, after all this time and cluelessness) bought reusable bags for my groceries, reusable cups for my drinks, and a re-usable drinking supply for my car.
Still, every time I buy anything else, it's covered in plastic.
This is actually a very American thing. Everything was not wrapped in France when I lived in France, though much was and likely more is now. People didn't wrap things in Mexico unless I bought the bag.
Such a law might pass straightforwardly.
My take on it was they wanted to know if it poisoned the animals, not if it just killed them.
Plastics are only part of the problem. Chemicals and irradiated materials are also a big issue with what is polluting the ocean, but also land. The amount of uranium waste in Kentucky, for instance, is astounding, not to mention contaminated wetsuits of those inspecting the hulls of nuclear submarines, and all things related. How about the chemicals in the metal drums deposited in the Gulf of Mexico? It is much bigger than most realize. Plastic is only part of it.
We have shat upon our home.
Well, if they're still in those drums, they won't be long. As of the mid-80's the nuclear industry had catalogued nearly 30 kinds of rust relevant to their operations,
but no rust-free metals.
The sides of those beerkins rust, too.
Quite right. The drums have long since developed rust and holes. No mention of this, of course, in the pollution discussion. There is little concern when it comes to corporations, the government, or the military, when it comes to the environment.
During the 60's green groups used to harass French ships dumping drums of nuclear waste from their reactors into the Ocean. Greenpeace started in 1971, to stop nuclear testing/dumping, and I believe joined in that effort to stop nuclear dumping in the Ocean.
This sounds like the Great Graveyard of Civilisation.
How much for the earth?
The plastic chickens are coming home to roost. I say we use
massive trawling nets to gather this trash and then burn it
at extremely hot temperatures. The smoke can be reburned
harmlessly, if treated correctly. The incinerators can be used to generate steam/electricity for residential consumers. Let's burn all the trash this way and keep the
planet healthy for subsequent generations. We put people on the moon, split the atom, and digitally networked the planet.
We can burn trash cleanly if we have the political/technological will, and leaders with vision.
Funny that this article appeared tonight both on Yahoo and Commondreams. I had just made up my mind yesterday that I would start a new discipline: buy nothing involving disposable plastic. The foundation for the practice is the 3 R's: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Anything that I purchase from now on, including food, medicine, clothing, essentials and non-essentials will be subjected to a severe critical appraisal of whether or not it contains anything that will need to go into the garbage can. My first and foremost goal is to Reduce, not to purchase anything in plastic and to reduce overall consumption. My second goal is to Reuse, to continue to use whatever plastic or other material that comes along with perishable items or is the item itself. My third goal is to Recycle, to sort out everything left over from Reducing and Reusing. Essentially, I should quit the garbage can altogether. Nothing but materials for recycling or reuse should be leaving my house.
It's Day Two and already there are challenges. My 9 year old is complaining that she can't have her favorite organic Kefir. I've turned down paying pasta of just about any sort except the whole wheat bulk macaroni; incredibly all the brands I've seen so far that aren't in plastic bags have these cardboard boxes with little "windows"' of plastic. And instant macaroni and cheese have plasticized paper packets inside of their boxes.... I forgot that my giant bag of organic carrots, that I usually buy for juicing, is yes, a plastic bag (how could I overlook that glaring fact???). However, I got around that today by vowing next time to buy from the Farmer's Market or to get the smaller loose bunches of carrots (tops intact) while taking it upon myself to open the current bag VERY CAREFULLY and then keeping it for reuse. I can't buy grapes, organic or not. Some other very healthful products are out of the question too; seaweed is always sold in a plastic bag, raisins have a plastic top even if the main container is cardboard and the mini boxes that I thought made a clever alternative are these days enclosed in sets bound by plastic, my favorite commercial almond milk (the only non-dairy that makes decent pudding) is in plasticized cardboard, vegan or vegetarian mock meat - like the MorningStar products that my kids will actually eat, or even more purist products like Amy's - nearly all have plastic bags inside their cardboard boxes. So there is sacrifice in this experiment. But there are also some surprising - or not so surprising - victories: I found I already own a lot of kitchen gadgets that can help me tremendously in this effort. I can make soymilk at home, which means I can also make my own tofu. A food dehydrator will take any fresh bulk shitake mushrooms or tomatoes and render them conveniently dried for easy future use, a crockpot creates soups that are ready when I come home from work. In addition, I've come to more keenly notice that most of the freshest and best in-season produce escapes being wrapped in plastic at the store, so my limitations are in many ways also encouraging a much healthier and greener lifestyle, even for some one like me who has traditionally purchased organic and nutritious food and tried to stay aware of what is better for the environment.
The other big plus to this new discipline is that it naturally extends itself outwards. I don't have to say much, except to announce my goals and to work toward them daily, but my family and my friends take note of what I'm doing immediately, question, start to think about their own use. And it goes on and on.... I take my medication bottle to the drugstore to truly "refill" and it's a political event; we've forgotten that at one time a refill was a common practice but now I'm raising the consciousness of retail staff and other consumers that we've come to accept just replacing plastic with more plastic mindlessly with our convenient "phone in" orders that necessitate a steady stream of new bottles.
I have to accept that there are most likely going to be times that I will be "forced"' to accept disposable plastic, whether in regard to food items or other essentials. Also, Reuse of certain plastic will eventually lead to it's degrading so much that in the end I will have to throw articles away. When you start doing this and really think about it you realize on a deeper and broader level how entrenched plastic is in our modern lives. That in itself is a meritorious philosophical insight for an individual, and by extension for a society. Yet, I think that this has really practical implications, the personal practice can send ripples out into the larger community if I pursue it assiduously and keep it documented, make it public. More of us should try to do this. I don't live on a farm right now. I have a busy work week that runs into more than 80 hours. I commute a fairly long distance and I have three children and a house to support. If I can do it, under tough conditions that demand maximum convenience, that's meaningful.
Good luck...for starters, I think you'd have to avoid buying any meat at all, it's always wrapped in plastic, even at a farmer's market...maybe if there is a genuine butcher nearby, they might use wax paper or something like that.
Oh and get some cloth bags to bring to the farmer's market, because they also use plastic bags there.
Oh, and seriously, start a blog about it so the world will know it's possible to avoid using plastic in many ways...websites such as Blogspot host free blogs.
Congrats! You are to be commended. The most important part of your commentary is that the children are learning from your example. After all, it is the world they will inherit that is being damaged and that they will have to figure out how to fix Check out www.axiomaticvew.com 2009 May, Plastic – Miracle or Monster. Also, read about genetically modified foods this month. There are healthy alternatives for Morningstar veggie burgers for the kids, that don’t include genetically engineered ingredients.
It has taken since World War II for us to realize that there are problems in the chemistry of our lives. Unfortunately, powerful corporations have prospered and learned to control the markets. Advertising draws new users and buyers and lulls the public into ignoring the chemical soup we live in. It is heart warming to see the growth of what is becoming known as the Green Revolution. We can only hope it grows fast enough.
In the end, life on this spaceship will come down to the most common denominator. The most valuable currency of all civilization. Food and water. Humanity will have to find a way to protect and produce pure and nutritious food and to decontaminate and protect clean water. Nothing else in the world will matter, except those two things. Globally, future generations will have to take away the privilege of patenting life forms, such as major chemical companies do now. They will have to demand and protect natural farming vs. chemical farming practices. They will have to demand and protect ethical use and conservation of the worlds resources; stealing from the less fortunate, because we’ve used up our own, is just wrong.
The children will have to save this world. My only hope is that they do not hate us for the mess we have left them.
I was looking recently at the grades of plastic and those which are actually 100% compostable and 100% biodegradable - there are few. I thought that maybe if I reduce my plastic in little steps as I cant do it in one foul hit - even though I think it would be great.
I am picking out plastics i.e. Recycle number 7 as it has already proven negative affects, also polycarb then I looked at the better of the bad bunch and recycle 2,4,5 came out on top.
This has made it a little easier to start my GET RID OF PLASTIC journey.
Nice, this study; but how about some suggestions how to get rid of all this plastic? Plastic used to be oil, and can be recycled in may ways. Plenty of ships available, it seems, that should be able to collect as much of this junk as possible. It may be an expensive project, but over all cheaper in the long run.