Great Pacific Garbage Patch Researchers Find Even More Plastic than Expected

Scientists with ‘Project Kaisei’, who spent three weeks gathering plastic debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, returned to the Bay Area this week with a rather horrifying sample of the trash that can be found floating in the ocean.

Chunks of styrofoam, cracked patio chairs, bleach bottles, tangled nets and old toys were among the junk they brought back – but the bigger concern is the amount of tiny, “confetti-like” pieces of broken plastic floating in the garbage patch 1,000 miles west of California.

From Mercury News:

“Marine debris is the new man-made epidemic. It’s that serious,” said Andrea Neal, principal investigator on the Kaisei, a 151-foot research ship on the trip.

Neal, a Santa Barbara researcher who has a doctorate in molecular genetics and biochemistry, said crews on the three-week voyage discovered tiny jellyfish eating bits of the plastic debris. The jellyfish are, in turn, eaten by fish like salmon or tuna, which people eat.

Because the plastic pieces contain toxic chemicals — and are believed to be able to absorb now-banned chemicals such as DDT and PCBs, which can persist in the environment for decades — state toxicologists have taken hundreds of the objects, along with more than 300 fish, to an environmental chemistry lab in Berkeley to see if any chemicals are moving up the food chain.

“Every day, every night, we’d pull up samples and pour the water through a sieve. It would be completely clogged with tiny pieces of plastic,” said Margy Gassel, a research scientist with the California Environmental Protection Agency. “It was so disturbing.”

The garbage patch is estimated to be twice the size of Texas, and scientists believe that the trash comes from storm drains and rivers in places like Japan and the Bay Area. It accumulates in a slow-moving zone in the Pacific Ocean. Most of the plastic fragments that make it up are too small to be visible from the air or from satellites.

Doug Woodring, one of the founders of Project Kaisei, believes that two possible solutions to keeping the problem from getting worse could be biodegradable plastics and specially designed storm drains that filter plastic debris from ocean-bound streams of water.

Stopping its spread is essential, but scientists aren’t even sure how to begin cleaning up what’s already collected in the garbage patch. The use of fine nets would likely result in the accidental killing of marine life. Hopefully, now that scientists are taking a closer look at the problem, a solution will be found soon.

Link [Mercury News]

Mr. Trash Can Is Overworked!

While carbon emissions may be the current cause of the environmental movement, let’s not forget the more tangible waste products we are unleashing upon the earth. Annually, households and businesses throw out 251 million tons of trash. And while, not shockingly, the major offenders are industries such as mining, everyday American consumers are responsible for five pounds of trash a day.

Check out this cute animated video from GOOD about an over-worked American trash can. It serves as inspiration to reduce our own output of trash as well as industrial waste.

Drastic Plastic: From Floating Plastic Crap to Toxic Food Chain Bomb

We all know that plastic waste in our oceans is a big threat for entanglement and digestion to sea-life and ocean-dependent creatures. It goes without saying, but, hell, let’s do it anyhow, that this is just another pathetic example of how human consumption and selfish disregard is dramatically affecting the world around us. And this in itself really sucks. Big time.

But just in case the visible plastic waste that is circulating the waterways of the world wasn’t enough to swallow, turns out the no-see-um plastic is chipping in to ruin the planet as well. You see, as non-biodegradable plastics are s-l-o-w-l-y broken down by the sun, they break up into smaller pieces, attracting and collecting toxins and poisonous residues along the way. (This is where you shake your head in shame, realizing that as a lean, mean, full-service polluting machine, we not only throw throw the plastic into the oceans, but the poisons that stick to the plastic as well. ‘Attaboy!)

The risk that these small, toxic-covered plastic bits will then be consumed by ocean-dwelling organisms is quite significant. And once inside the little critters, digestive enzymes take over and increase the risk that the toxicity will then be absorbed.

“Now there’s the potential for those chemicals to be released to those marine organisms if they then eat the plastic.” – Dr. Richard Thompson of the University of Plymouth

It doesn’t take much to run through your own mental food chain map before you realize that the threat is real. Talk about a serious bummer.

Source [BBC News]

Flickr photo credit [jschneid]