Amanda's Thoughts

Plastic Pollution of the Marine Environment

December 23, 2009 at 5:33 am Leave a comment

By: Amanda Artz

I had the pleasure of meeting and listening to a lecture by Captain Charles Moore in ESRI’s new auditorium.  During a voyage from Hawaii to Long Beach, Captain Moore discovered the Pacific Garbage Patch.  Calling today “The Age of Plastic”, Charles shared troubling information about the biggest ocean secret ever.

Photo courtesy of GISandScience.com

Captain Moore owns and sails an oceanographic research vessel called the Orv Alguita.  It can lift up to a ton in weight and access remote areas.  Using a mantatrol, Moore captures zooplankton to study.  During one of his sample collections he made a troubling discovery:  an abundance of plastic bits floated in the water in larger quantities than zooplankton!  Plastic is not biodegradable; instead, it photodegrades, which means it breaks up into tiny particles as small as bits of sand grains.  Captain Moore believes that soon when ocean water samples are taken, not only will the salinity be recorded but also the plastic content.  Besides this discovery, Charles came across the Pacific Garbage Patch that is controlled by the North pacific Subtropical Gyre.  In this garbage patch floats 3.5 million tons of junk, 80% of it being plastic.  The entire patch is TWICE the size of Texas!  Samples of trash collected contained plastic tarps, Asian origin plastic, toothbrushes, bucket handles, fishing line, bottle caps, plastic popsicle sticks, umbrella handles, and many other unrecognizable photodegraded plastic pieces.  What is interesting about the patch is that almost all of the junk is derived from Asian countries.  Moore explained that because of the oceanic currents, Japanese trash floats to the West Pacific while US trash floats the East Pacific near the Philippines.  What is even more troubling is that there are five known garbage patches in the world!  The journey trash travels to each patch site from its human occupied origin takes about six years total, and although it might not seem as though it affects us, it is completely changing oceanic ecosystems.

Millions of tons of plastic are eaten by fish everyday.  Plastic is very harmful because it is a virtual sponge that soaks up oil and other pollutants.  There are one million times more pollutants in plastic then in the water around it.  And think about it:  if plastic contains toxins that fish ingest, what do you think happens when we ingest fish?  Plastic doesn’t just affect the animals living in the ocean.  Studies done on dead Laysan Albatross chicks’ stomachs revealed that they ingested so much plastic given to them by their mothers who had mistaken it as a food source that they couldn’t carry the weight of the indigestible plastic in their stomachs and died.  10,000 chicks die every year from this cause.  Trash is also a new substrate of colonization for animals trying to lay eggs.  Samples of trash were collected with eggs attached because an animal had mistaken the trash to be rock or coral.  Plastic sticks to jellyfish, and rocky inter-tidal organisms and coral colonize on debris.  We are virtually creating an entirely new ocean habitat and it can’t be a good thing.  Plastic transports invasive species, creates shade and blocks the suns rays, and is buoyant which slows sequestration of carbon dioxide.  If we don’t figure out ways to reduce the plastic pollution in the ocean, our oceans could be a completely different place in less than 50 years.

At the end of Captain Moore’s speech was a question and answer portion where somebody asked him how we could start using more biodegradable packaging and products.  Instead of answering the question, he shook his head and said angrily “We can’t do the same thing we’ve always done with new materials.  We must find ways to completely change the way we live in order to help this planet.”  I literally got goosebumps because he is right.  Unless we change the way we live, our children might not get to see what was once one of the most beautiful features on earth; the ocean.  We need to start now or it might be too late, and thanks to Captain Moore and the life style changes he preaches, we might just have a chance to save our ocean.

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