Entering the plastic soup - Day 7 – One week out.

Our noon position: Latitude 3008.447 North, Longitude 16524.955 West

At 0700 hours, still pitch black outside, we had entered another time zone west of Hawaii but not changed the ship’s clocks, those of us on watch were treated to a rare sighting – Venus and Jupiter rising together. Two brilliant silver-gold orbs fading with the morning’s light.

We spent a restful morning after yesterday’s relatively rough travel – most of the crew slept in, nudged awake by the scent of banana pancakes, the promise of a perfect, sunny day…., and the Captain’s animated countdown to latitude 30 North: (Drum roll) We’ve entered the central high pressure cell of the gyre, and had our first very successful days work here!

We began sampling as soon as the last pancake disappeared, deploying four trawls simultaneously – the Manta, the Bongo, and two smaller surface trawls. Unlike the Manta, which skims the surface, the Bongo Trawl is lowered to 100 meters deep, to give a more accurate snapshot of plastic particles throughout the water column (we have done 10 meter and 30 meter bongo trawls on previous voyages). The Manta and Bongo trawls are being used for research purposes; the smaller trawls Marcus Eriksen is using to collect samples to distribute for educational purposes, to students, policymakers, and the media.

The image above shows what we found in our first sample. This truly illustrates the term Charles uses to describe the gyre, “plastic soup”. It really is difficult to comprehend the vastness of this phenomenon. There is still a common public misconception that the gyre is a “place”, a detectable spot, when rather it is an enormous, extremely diffuse region…..being out here, seeing nothing but blue horizons day after day certainly helps.

Our strategy from here on out will be to sample at each degree of latitude, (one degree of latitude equals sixty nautical miles) or roughly every eight hours. We just completed our second round of sampling, 1:30 am at 31 degrees north, and are now moving on to the next spot, 32 degrees north, about eight hours away under power with both engines.

Tomorrow, a bit about what Charles found while free diving with a hand held net, just below the Manta Trawls one meter limit……

Aloha from the crew and Captain of the ORV Alguita!

High tailing the trade winds- Day 6.

Latitude: 2642.350 N, Longitude: 16502.179 W

Current Log: 939 Nautical Miles.

Were on the run today. Screaming along at up to 11 knots, heaving and rocking and bucking our way to the center of the Gyre – the Captain’s warning back in LA that we may be in for a wild bronco ride now makes more sense….

As today was another travel day, it’s a good time to discuss the weather systems a bit, as they are a key factor in debris accumulation in the Pacific, north of the Hawaiian Islands.

“Trade winds” is a term from the days of yore, when ships relied entirely on wind for commerce. These winds are created by temperature variations – hot air from the equator rises, moves away from the equator, cools as it moves north toward the poles, and descends. As it descends, and its pressure increases, it is warmed again by compression, and creates a clockwise circulation. (Learn more about the trade winds here.)

These high-pressure atmospheric systems, traveling in a clockwise direction, create surface ocean currents which are like a vortex, sucking materials in, such as debris, as the higher pressure pushes down. The more northerly lows, which travel counter clockwise, tend to “spit” debris out. Where these two zones meet is known as a transition zone – the sub-arctic lower pressure zone spits its debris into the high-pressure whirlpool. The result? Well that’s exactly what we’re headed to investigate.

The readings on our Barometer (Make your own barometer here, or here), which have been stable for the last week, now indicate a rise in pressure – which means were nearing the center of a high pressure vortex within the Gyre. A few scattered pieces of large debris here signaled our impending arrival - a plastic laundry basket, with a school of iridescent blue-green fish trapped underneath, and another fishing float. At 10 knots, both flew by before we had the chance to scoop them, but there will be no shortage of debris to collect, starting tomorrow.

The lack of activity today – no sampling, no sail hoisting, leak fixing or other boat repairs was more than made up for by the Captain’s famous sweet and sour Ono. Caught yesterday, prepared this afternoon – homemade sauce with fresh pineapple and red peppers, served over sticky rice, and devoured with much appreciation this evening.

Now for an evenings rest, as we hopefully gear up for some intense sampling.

Aloha from the ORV Alguita crew and Captain!

Day 5: Traveling Day

Noon Lat Long: 23 38.8 N, 164 49.5 W

Aloha students, teachers, and friends, its great to hear from you! The crew sends a special hello today to the students of Burbank and Edwards Middle Schools – your enthusiasm keeps us fueled, here thousands of miles from home…..

Today has been wonderful day – part preparation, part travel, and lots of fun as we make a beeline for our next sampling spot, taking advantage of some swift, steady winds. We’ve been cruising along at a steady 7-9 knots.

Early morning, we pulled up our first and only sample for the day – as today is mostly a travel day. We’re a few days yet from our destination, but still find evidence of plastic in all of our samples…

Daybreak also brought us a stunning view of Necker Island(shown above), or “Mokumanamana”, an extremely remote Island in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument, (NWHI-MNM). Mokumanana stands 200 feet high, a relatively small Island with sheer rocky cliffs and sparse vegetation. Now on the National Registry of Historic Places, Mokumanana was likely used for religious purposes by local Islanders, between AD 1100 and AD 1700.

As we needed to make some emergency boat repairs in the lee (calm) afforded by the island acting as a windbreak, we had the rare opportunity to observe the island's austere beauty. Frigate birds, petrels and boobies were everywhere. A young humpback whale surfaced right next to the boat. A rich habitat indeed!

The momentary reverie was shattered as we spotted a large piece of floating debris – a plastic fishing float bobbing on the water where moments before a baby humpback had surfaced.

We mentioned yesterday that we’d share a bit more about the NWHI-MNM, lesser known than the Southeast Islands, yet home to some breathtaking ecosystems and some beautiful, highly endangered species, such as the Hawaiian Monk Seal, a fascinating creature we learned a bit about today from our underwater photographer Joel Paschal. Joel used to work for NOAA studying and removing marine debris from the National Monument, and had the very rare opportunity of visiting many of these remote Islands. In fact he lived on a sailboat for four months doing research here.

Rather than tell you what we learned about the Monk Seal, lets see what you can find out on your own ( explore here, and here)
Send a few interesting facts about the Monk Seal by this coming Monday, and we’ll chose one or two of your answers to post on our blog.

Though we didn’t spot any endangered species today, we had some other great wildlife sightings – two Humpback Whales, a bunch of Frigates, some petrels, black footed albatross, three pink footed boobies that hitched a free ride on our mast for a while, and an Ono – this last one is actually a fish that we caught, here are Jeff and Anna holding it up.




Your Questions:
Several of you had some questions, some of which we’ll answer, others we’re going to play hardball and throw right back at you!
Has the ORV Alguita ever been attacked by a shark?
No. The ORV Alguita is a good 50 feet long, a very solid craft, and doesn’t resemble anything a shark would find appetizing. We’d love to see some sharks – from the safety of our boat that is! What kind of foods would be appealing to a large predatory shark, say a great white?

What do we eat besides fish?
With 4 avid cooks on board, and a boat full of fresh ingredients, we’ve been eating like kings! Hilo has an awesome farmers market, and we loaded up on local, organic produce just before leaving.
Every morning, our Captain whips up a beautiful fruit salad, with pineapples, mangos, papayas, apples, bananas, tangerines, and jicama, which we all snack on till….till someone prepares the next meal! Joel made a delicious risotto the other day, Anna seems to like making salads – lately shredded carrots and red peppers with a ginger-garlic-cilantro vinagrette, Jeff is our poke master (poke is a raw fish Hawaiian dish, have you ever tried it?) and has also been making lots of popcorn, sprinkled with nutritional yeast, cayenne pepper, and garlic salt. Delicious. Marcus and Herb both enjoy eating, and fortunately, doing dishes!

What is a cookie cutter shark?
Here’s one we are going to return back to you. We want to know what YOU can find out! Tell us, and again, we’ll post a few good answers on our blog. (try here!)

Thanks again to you all from the ORV Alguita Crew, and keep your questions coming - your support keeps the wind in our sails!

Day 4

Our location as of noon today: Latitude: 2223.99 North, Longitude: 16128.85 West
Welcome to our Spanish speaking friends! (See translated update below!!)
We’re thrilled to have so many schools with us again. Some of you joined the ORV Alguita on her last voyage from Los Angeles to Hawaii, and some of you are just signing on. We look forward to sharing our experiences with all of you, and would love to hear from you as well – send us your questions, comments, or thoughts and we will do our best to respond.

For our new students a brief word about the purpose of this journey:
We’re heading to an area of the ocean called the North Pacific Gyre to collect data on the amounts of plastic debris in the surface waters.
To collect this information, we use a Manta Trawl – like the one you see here in this photo:

The Manta Trawl has a fine mesh tube at the end, which collects anything larger than .333 microns. We launch the Manta Trawl off of our boat, and drag it along the ocean surface for up to 2 hours. When we reel it in, we find all sorts of interesting creatures –jellyfish, salps, copepods, lantern fish, etc., along with increasing amounts of plastic. We preserve these samples in a jar with formalin, to take back to our labs for analysis.

Back in the lab, our volunteers separate out all of the plastic particles, so we can compare the weight of plastic to the total weight of the biomass. This gives us a ratio of plastic to plankton, and gives us an idea of just how much plastic is accumulating in our oceans and potentially competing with plankton as a food source.

So far, we’ve seen evidence of plastic in all 6 samples, though we won’t know exactly how much until we return.

The Algalita Marine Research Foundation has been studying plastic debris in the North Pacific Gyre for over ten years. What makes this voyage different is that were heading to an area that has never been sampled, where we may possibly find the largest accumulation of debris ever seen.

Crossing the Pacific Ocean in the winter means we may hit some rocky weather…. However winter is also the time of year when debris accumulations are predicted to be the highest. This trip will help us prove this theory.

We’ve now been at sea for four days, sailing day and night to reach our next destination. There’s a lot of work to do on board – raising and lowering the sails, collecting samples, taking turns navigating while other people sleep, repairing problems on the boat, and blogging our experiences for you to share.

But there’s also plenty of down time – to read, fish, prepare meals, catch up on sleep, look for whales and seabirds, and enjoy being in the middle of the ocean – here’s our Captain, Charles Moore, taking an unusual bath off the back of the boat!

By tomorrow morning we will be in Necker Island, one of the southernmost Islands in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument (NHWMNM). Check back tomorrow to see what we find in our samples, and to learn a bit more about the Hawaiian Islands MNM.

Aloha and thank you from the ORV Crew!
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Bienvenidos a nuestros amigos Hispanohablantes!

Nuestra ubicacion al mediodia hoy: Latitud: 2223.99 Norte, Longitud: 16128.85 Oeste

Nos da un placer enorme que tantas escuelas nos acompanen de nuevo. Algunas de ustedes participaron con el ORV Alguita en el ultimo viaje de Los Angeles a Hawaii, y algunas acaban de juntarnos. Nos anima la oportunidad de compartir nuestras experiencias con todos ustedes, y nos encantaria recibir noticias suyas – escribenos tus preguntas, comentarios u ideas, y hacemos todo lo posible para responder.

Para nuestros estudiantes nuevos, les contamos un poco sobre la intencion de esta investigacion:
Nos dirigimos hacia una region del oceano que se llama el giro del Pacifico Norte para recoger datos sobre la canditad de plastico en el oceano.
Para recoger ese clase de informacion, usamos un equipo que se llama la Draga Manta, como ves aqui en la foto:

La Draga Manta tiene un especie de red muy fino que colleciona cualquier cosa que sea mas grande que .33 micronos. Botamos la Manta desde la embarcacion y lo arrastramos por la superficie del agua. Cuando la sacamos, encontramos unas cuantas especies de criaturas fascinantes – las medusas, las salpas, copepodos, peces brilliantes y mas, pero tambien vemos unas cantidades crecientes de plastico. Preservamos las muestras en unas jarras con formol, y los traemos a nuestro laboratorio para analizarlas.

En el laboratorio, nuestros voluntarios separan todos los particulos plasticos para que podamos comparar el peso del plastico al peso del plankton. Con eso, averiguamos la proporcion de plastico a plankton, y nos da una idea de cuantos particulos se estan accumulando en nuestros oceanos - a lo mejor estan en competencia con el plankton como una fuente de alimentacion.

Ya hemos visto pruebas de plastico en todas las muestras hasta hoy, aunque no sabremos exactamente cuantas hasta que volvamos.

El Algalita Marine Research Foundation lleva diez anos investigando el asunto del plastico en el giro del Pacifico Norte. Este viaje es distincto a los otro en que nosotros vamos a una region que todavia no se ha estudiado, en donde es posible que encontremos la accumulacion de basura mas grande que hay.

Cruzar el mar pacifico en el invierno significa que capaz tropezemos con tiempo algo dificil…..pero el invierno tambien es cuando la accumulacion de basura puede ser mas grande. La investigacion que hacemos nos ayuda en comprobar ese teoria.

Ya llevamos cuatro dias en el mar, navegando dia y noche para alcanzar nuestra destinacion. Hay bastante trabajo en el barco – alzar y bajar las velas, recoger las muestras, participar cada uno en hacer la navegacion para que los otros duerman, arreglar problemas con el barco, y escribir en el blog para que ustedes compartan el viaje con nosotros.

Pero tambien hay tiempo para relajar – leer, pescar, cocinar, dormir, buscar las ballenas y las aves marinos, y disfrutar estar en el medio del oceano – aqui ves nuestro Capitan, Charles Moore, banandose un una manera graciosa detras del barco!

Esperamos llegar por la manana en la Isla Necker, una de las Islas mas surena del Northwest Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument (NHWMNM). Si vuelvan manana, pueden ver lo que descubrimos en nuestras pruebas, y aprender un poco mas de las Islas de Hawaii.

Aloha y gracias de la tripulacion del ORV Alguita!

The calm before the storm

Our noon position: Latitude 21 39.297 N, Longitude 160 32.787 W.

Day three. Heading North, and beginning to notice plastic debris on the rise. Upon sunrise, we spotted a small, rocky island in the distance, named Kaula, off Kauai to which we headed seeking wind protection for our first sampling of the day. We reached the Island by late morning – a stark, barren yet beautiful half caldera lunarscape protruding sharply from the sea. The only signs of visible life were a dense cloud of Noddy Terns hovering atop the crest, along with an incongruous group of old rockets, which appeared ready to launch, possibly a vestige from the cold war.

Here Marcus, Herb, Jeff, and Joel examine our first sample for plastic content.

Our first three trawls, to the naked eye, yielded scattered pieces of plastic, a few visible nurdles, and a host of colorful organisms - numerous Vellelidea “blue buttons”, copepods, salps, Portuguese Man O War, and other miniscule creatures. We won’t know for certain how much plastic these samples contain until we bring them back to our lab.

Taking advantage of relatively calm seas before some predicted squalls, we set out 2 final night trawls, and noticed a marked increase in plastic particles. And we're still hundreds of miles from the convergence zone…..

Crossing the Pacific – In February?

As promised yesterday, a bit more background on the research goals guiding this mission. And answers to a question repeated by several concerned friends and family:

· "Why did you choose the middle of winter to cross the North Central Pacific?"

The primary goal is to test the hypothesis that marine debris concentrations will be highest in the winter, when the current-driven surface convergence zone is formed. This concept was put forward in a recently published paper, Marine Debris Collects Within the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone. Question: What is a convergence zone? Why would these change during different seasons?

Finding and removing marine debris, especially discarded fishing nets, is an extremely costly process. So coming up with ways to better predict where these debris concentrations might occur is of great interest to marine research and conservation organizations.

DELI – the Debris Estimated Likelihood Index – was designed for this purpose. Using chlorophyll concentrations and sea surface temperatures – two factors among others that correlate to debris concentrations, DELI is expected to locate debris concentrations in our vast, seemingly infinite ocean.

As these studies were conducted by aerial surveys, sampling in the winter would have been extremely difficult if not impossible. Winter storms disperse surface debris into the water column, while whitecaps and confused seas obscure vision from above. So although debris concentrations are likely highest in the winter months, no one has yet been able to verify this. Until, possibly now…..

Though trash is mainly what we’re looking for, wildlife sightings are always a welcome addition. Today we spotted two humpback whales – a mother and her calf, two Laysan Albatross, a red-footed booby, (shown here) and countless invertebrates in our samples.

Our last sample for the day collected at 9 pm, we raised our Genoa jib, and are cruising steadily through the night, heading for two more islands in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands National Monument to collect samples before we reach our main research area.

We should reach Nihoa Island tomorrow morning, and Nekker Island the following – anecdotes and photos to follow.

Aloha from the ORV Alguita Crew, thank you for your support…and if you have any good banana recipes, send them our way - we have a raft of bananas all set to ripen simultaneously!

Jeff saves the day

Day 2: 1/22/08
Our noon position: Longitude: 2024.570 N, Latitude: 15813.145 W

Continuing on our westward course. Steady winds have been propelling us along at 6-10 knots – a fair clip for those unaccustomed to thinking in nautical terms. Question: how do we calculate a nautical mile? Weather conditions should remain constant for a few more days, 4-5 foot waves, gently heaving swells dotted with whitecaps, warm, sunny skies.
Though today held relatively little in the way of debris – winds were still too powerful to sample - it was far from uneventful. Beginning with our Sashimi catch for the day…We hooked a sizable bull Mahi Mahi that took considerable patience, 4 crew members, and serious muscle to reel in. Having never seen Mahi Mahi outside of a restaurant, I was struck by its beauty - bright iridescent emerald-yellow, with a flat, bull-shaped head.

Upon finally hauling it on deck, we noticed a perfect bite mark, tell tale signs of a cookie cutter shark. Question: how big are cookie cutter sharks, and what is their primary prey? Perhaps we hooked his dinner right from his mouth…..

Ship happenings
Boats require constant maintenance, as all boat owners know. Today was no exception. Faulty welding back in Hilo had burned a hole in our hull, into which a steady stream of water was trickling. “This could be a problem” is not a phrase one hopes to hear from the Captain….
Fortunately, our nimble boat monkey Jeff was able to fix the problem, squeezing into an uncomfortably tight space, and patching the hole with epoxy glue. Many high fives and relieved smiles were thrown his way. Kudos!

Lessons Learned
Though we may not have had direct encounters today with marine debris, the lessons drawn from today’s main events – catching a fish, and dealing with boat repairs, can be applied metaphorically to larger issues.

The Mahi Mahi was a reminder that we depend entirely on the natural world for our food, our sustenance, and our survival. The ocean appears limitless, yet as we will see in a few days, our human impact travels far and wide;
And the boat repairs reminded us that everything requires maintenance - our bodies, our vehicles, and most importantly, our ecosystems. (Question for students: what is the second law of thermodynamics? How might we apply this to the statement above?). If we want to continue coexisting on this planet, we need to begin treating it with the care we often reserve for prized personal possessions.
Tomorrow, we'll provide some more background on what we plan to study in the gyre. In the meantime:
Aloha from the Captain and the Crew of ORV Alguita.

School Introductions

Here is a map of all of the schools currently participating in the Ship-2-Shore Education Program. Sign your school up in the comments section below and you will be added to the map!


Welcome aboard to all the schools participating in this exciting research voyage!!! Please introduce yourselves in the comments section below.