Greetings and welcome aboard the Sea Dragon!
We're really looking forward to having you join us for our voyage across the North Atlantic Gyre, studying plastic marine pollution. On Thursday, January 28th we'll set sail from Bermuda, to cross the Sargasso Sea, and head towards the Azores. Can you find these places on a map? We started our journey in the US Virgin Islands, and spent 9 days sailing to Bermuda, collecting 20 samples of the oceans surface along the way. What did we find? Small particles of plastic in every sample, along with many amazing marine creatures. This plastic gets into our oceans from our communities - the litter we see in our streets and rivers eventually washes out to sea, where it gets swept up into huge current systems called "gyres". As scientists, we want to know how this plastic is impacting marine wildlife - the fish, turtles, seabirds, and other creatures that live in our oceans. And how it may be impacting us as well.
Life aboard a sailboat is full of excitement and challenges - storms, high seas, occasional battles with seasickness, cooking for 13 people in a rocky boat, spectacular views, and fascinating marine organisms - we will share these with you over the coming weeks. We hope you'll enjoy the ride - ask us any questions about what we're seeing, or just say hello - we'd love to hear from you!Cheers,
Anna and Marcus
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Lesson Extensions
Teachers- Here are links to more activities and lessons relating to the topics discussed above-Ocean Currents and Plastic Pollution
Watersheds
Plastic Ingestion
7 comments:
Hello from Burbank MIddle School-6th grade-since you're so close to Bermuda, the kids want to know if the legends about the Bermuda Triangle are true? Will you cross the Bermuda Triangle? What types of animals have you found? Good wishes go with you and too many questions to include now. Good Luck- Lucy
The East Hills 4H Green Teens (aka Plastic Eliminators) are wishing you a safe voyage.
We have become quite educated on the Pacific Gyre so we look forward to expanding our knowledge about these other gyres. Two of our members have made a short educational about the North Pacific Gyre which they will be showing at a 4H County Presentation Day On Jan. 30th. Maybe they will mention your new voyage as a footnote in their introduction?
Talk to you soon!
Amy
BOCES, Binghamton, NY, USA
Special Education Students 18-21 yrs ol.
Ahoy captain and crew! My students and I are excited to join your voyage! We learned about your quest to from our special education newspaper called "News 2 U" and all about Plastiki. We have non-readers, but were able to enjoy the video footage online. As your voyage begins, if you can please provide as much video footage as possible that would be great. I'll be teaching a unit about "reduce, reuse, recycle" and reducing our carbon footprint on the environment as your voyage continues! God Speed!
Mrs. H (BOCES classroom teacher)
Hello,
We are 6th grade Magnet students from South Gate, CA. We are looking forward to following your journey to study the "garbage dump". We will be talking to you over the weeks of this project.
Thank you for sharing with us.
Ms. Walker and Company
Hi, my name is Jerie and I am a senior at River Ridge High School in New Port Richey, Florida. My question is: How much plastic are you expecting to see while crossing the Sargasso Sea, and how are you going to deal with all the seaweed when collecting plastic samples?
Hi, my name is Sandii from river ridge high school. Do you think plastic marine pollution will affect us in our life time? Also, what are more ways we can help this cause?
I've always been a big fan of marine biology, and helping the environment so i would just like to give you guys a much deserved THANK YOU! I've cleaned over 15 beaches at least 2ce a year and i've carried away over 100 pounds of garbage from these beaches but in the short 6 months it collectively added up. The craziest thing ive ever found was a poisonous toxic waste bucket. I want to know, Whats the worst thing you've encountered?
And how much more i can do to help? Anastasia, River Ridge high school Fl.
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