Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Only 150 miles to go!!


Feb. 10 6pm position 37.20N,31.04W

The Azores are near. We've only 150 miles to go, which we should cover by tomorrow morning. Before the sun rose we threw our trawl in for one last sample. Once again, plastic, but also plenty of myctophid fish. We'll send this sample to the Algalita lab in California for stomach analysis. When we did this in the North Pacific Gyre we found 1/3rd of the fish had ingested plastic fragments.

This trawl did not contain any sargassum. There seemed to be more large fragments of plastic in this trawl, leading me to think that that sargassum mats floating in the North Atlantic Gyre serve a sieves for large fragments of plastic pollution. In the absence of this floating seaweed the plastic fragments are more distributed across the sea.

We've trawled 35 times in 3,000 miles. Tomorrow we will land on our third island in the North Atlantic Gyre. We'll travel around the Azores to see what washes up on their shores and discover how they deal with plastic pollution. Stay tuned...

Answers to Participant Questions
Santa Monica High, CA asked how we get the internet. We’ve got a program on our computers called OCENS Mail, which allows you to check email by plugging a phone into your computer. But you need a phone. We use a satellite phone, which communicates to several satellites circling the earth. We could surf the net if we wanted to, but we usually only send emails and photos to our blog. At 3 bucks a minute for satellite time, there’s no time to waste!


Rolani, at George Washington High School in Guam, asked if we often find fish stuck in objects, like the trigger fish we found in a bottle last week. We’ve seen only a few examples of marine life interacting with plastic on this trip. We’ve seen plastic bottles chewed by fish, plastic particles stuck inside comb jellyfish, and another triggerfish hiding inside a floating piece of plastic pipe.

There is a larger issue of ingestion and entanglement that has been documented world wide. So far, 44% of seabird species have been found with plastic inside or entangled around their bodies. Also, 22 species of marine mammals, all sea turtle species, and a very long list of fish. Last night Joel, one of the crew members on the Sea Dragon, described working for NOAA to remove fishing nets from the Hawaiian Islands and finding whale bones and turtle skulls trapped in nets. Each of these examples of ingestion and entanglement are messages to us to be responsible for the end use of the materials we create. Perhaps you can share with us what is happening in Guam to deal with plastic pollution.

Giselle and Valerie from South Gate Middle School, CA asked how many pounds of plastic have we collected. We’re only skimming the surface of the ocean every hundred miles to collect whatever floats in those areas, so we’ve only got 10-15 pounds. We could have collected tons of plastic pollution on the beaches of Bermuda.

Our goal out here isn’t to clean up the Atlantic Ocean. We believe it’s impossible to clean it up once it enters the sea. Our goal is to document what’s out here by sampling in many places. We would like to see only marine life out here, but all of our samples contain plastic.

So, how do we clean it up? It has to begin on land. Much of the plastic pollution out here begins on land. We must find better ways to recover plastic waste, either with a higher return deposit for all kinds of waste. We can also pass laws to end the use of the plastic products that are poorly designed, like plastic bags, Styrofoam cups and products designed to be thrown away.


Silvia and Brandy from South Gate Middle School, CA asked about cleaning up the ocean. We believe that is impossible to do out here. It has to start on land. Imagine a trying to clean up a grain of rice out of a bathtub. That’s how spread out the plastic is. It’s little pieces of plastic everywhere. Now think how big of a bathtub the Atlantic Ocean is! There are billions of plastic fragments floating everywhere. They are hard to see, so we drag or nets across the surface to collect them.

Sometimes we find the big stuff floating with mats of seaweed. That’s been really shocking. We’ve found plastic buckets, crates, boots, shoes, bottle caps, plastic forks, bags, bottles, even half a toy babydoll. It’s impossible to clean up all this stuff. It has to happen on land.

I know you live near the Los Angeles River. Imagine a bottle cap floating down that river. If no one picks it up it will flow out to sea and stay there. Imagine a plastic bag blowing down the street. If now one picks it up it may fly into the ocean. Imagine a plastic fork in your school cafeteria that is dropped on the ground. If it rains, where does it go?

So what do we do on land to solve this problem? First we need to find a different material than plastic to make the products that are designed to be thrown away. We can pass laws to ban plastic bags and other single-use disposable items. We can also improve recovery methods by making recycling easier, or increasing the cash deposit on products. Already, Los Angeles does plenty of work to capture some trash flowing down the LA River using nets, or putting screens on storm drains, but it’s not enough. It’s going to take plenty of change to end the plastic plague in the world’s oceans, and I’m sure we can do it. What ideas do you have?


Juan from South Gate Middle School, CA asked what’s a knot? It’s a nautical term to measure speed, like the way we use miles per hour on land. One knot equals 1.15 miles per hour. And how did we end up in a hurricane? Well, we chose to do our research in the North Atlantic Ocean in winter. There are almost always hurricane-force storms here at this time of year. I don’t think I would like to be in one again. In fact, there’s another one headed our way in three days. Fortunately, we’ll arrive in the Azores by then.


Q: Hizers from Terra (forth grade) in San Francisco! I was wondering what percentage of things were found in the gyre, such as toys, food wrappers, packaging, or just things that don't work all together so we can avoid putting them in the ocean ourselves.


A: It looks like half of the large plastic objects we find come from the fishing industry, like fragments of fishing line, net, and floats. But there’s plenty of plastic pollution coming from land. We’ve found things like plastic toys, a boxers mouth piece, and plenty of broken buckets and crates. Most of what we find are tiny bits of plastic confetti that cannot be identified. Those pieces could have been plastic bottle caps, or knives and forks, pieces of buckets, toys, wrappers and packaging.

Keeping all plastic waste out of our watersheds is the best solution. It begins on land. It begins where you are. What kinds of solutions can you imagine to keep plastic out of the sea?

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi this is the S.P.L.A.S.H. club from River Ridge High School. As you get closer to your destination, are you finding a larger quantity of debris?

Is it more difficult for your crew to fish for your own food, due to the storms you've encountered?




Thanks;
Amanda, Corinne, Christina, & Kayla.

Anonymous said...

Hey yall this is the SHARKS (Tyler, Garrett, Landan, Matt) from River Ridge High School. We were wondering what the average amount of plastic you bring up in a day? And after you bring it up, what do you guys plan on doing with it?

Anonymous said...

This is hannah from river ridge high school, florida. I read this post and what stuck out to me was what u said about the sargassum. You said that the plastic gets distributed across the waters when the seaweed is absent. so my question is, can the seagrass help with the plastic distribution by keeping it in one place for a long period of time?

Anonymous said...

myles, University Hs Los angeles California 10th grade, Does the ammount of plastic in the ocean affect the fish growth ?

Anonymous said...

myles, University Hs Los angeles California 10th grade, Does the ammount of plastic in the ocean affect the fish growth ?

Anonymous said...

hi my name anthony from university hish school in southern california im in 9th grade and i wanted to know if it is safe to be out in the ocean in the winter time and if the currents are safe .

Anonymous said...

University Hs Los angeles California, how much junk is thier

Anonymous said...

Hi my name is Bianca i go to University Huigh School in LosAngeles, Californa. What do you do with all the trash after? Do you recycle? Is there an overwhelming amount of seeweed? Did you guys enjoy and learn on this experience? Well i learned a vast amount from this blog, and i would love to be an acctivist in this type.

Anonymous said...

It must be very hard to see how much pollution there is in the ocean. How do u manage to clean so much? University High School. Los Angeles, c.a. 12th grade. Paola.

Anonymous said...

University High School
Los Angeles
10th
Francisco

how did they discovered algalita?

Anonymous said...

about how many myctophid fish die yearly.?

Anonymous said...

hello I am Triny I go to University High school. I was wondering what the average amount of plastic you guys get a day? and if this plastic pollution continues what would happend to the ocean lives?

Anonymous said...

hey watsup my name is francisco 10th grade from University H,S Los Angeles C,A
and the question that i would like to ask is that how do they k3p th3 AlGaL1Ta SaF3?

Anonymous said...

hey watsup my name is francisco 10th grade from University H,S Los Angeles C,A
and the question that i would like to ask is that how do they k3p th3 AlGaL1Ta SaF3?

Anonymous said...

HI!My name is enrique(10th grade) from university high school, well i learned something that i did not know. so
do you recycle??????????????

Anonymous said...

Hi im andrew from university highschool in souththern california and I was wondering how does trash end up in the ocean

Anonymous said...

andrew from uni high in south cal. why do fish eat plastic, what do they confuse it for

Anonymous said...

Hello my name is Sierra, I go to University HS in L.A., C.A.and im in 9th grade. I think its great that we have people who actually care and are doing things to save the ocean life and marine eviroment. I also was wondering how much trash to guys find in a day and about how many ocean creatures do you think are affected by it.

Anonymous said...

Hi this is Han, a freshman in University High School in Los Angeles, California. When I first saw the picture, I thought it was a picture of an ashtray with some dead fish in it. It's really disgusting how those kind of things float around. Do you just find those things every time you throw the trawl, or do you have to throw it a couple of times to get something like that? I'm sorry if the question sounds dumb. You can blame my teacher for making me do this. Thank you for your time.

Anonymous said...

Hello. This is Micah Laird from River Ridge High School in New Port Richey, Fl. I am curious about plastic consumtion. If humans consume fish containing plastics what effect can this have on the humans health?