Will science prevail in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

August 13, 2:13 PMSF Boating ExaminerLaird Durham

Previous Next

2 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the SF Boating Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

                             Photo by John H. Kim

The San Francisco research ship, Kaisei. left the Bay August 3rd for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for the first scientific study of the widely hyped gyre in the horse latitudes north of Hawaii that has been collecting plastic debris for years. The Kaisei will join another research ship that left a month ago from San Diego.

The ships are sailing under the auspices of the non-profit Ocean Voyages Institute, Sausalito, formed by adventurer Mary Crowley, and the University of California. The ships will try to determine the size of the patch, which has been variously reported as larger than Texas, the size of France, and even larger than the United States. They will try to determine density of the plastic in the patch, which has been reported to be 6, and even 48, times the density of zooplankton; and they hope to find out if the garbage can be cleaned up or converted to something useful, such as diesel fuel. The ships will try to determine the damage the disintegrating but everlasting plastic has on sea life through the food chain, and, eventually, to people who eat ocean-caught fish.

Since Charles Moore sailed unexpectedly into the garbage patch on his way back to California from Hawaii, and raised a high-decibel alarm, Moore and a half-dozen environmental groups including Greenpeace, have filled the media and lecture circuit with evidence of the dire threat of plastic garbage to the marine environment. Graduate students by the dozens have been counting pieces of plastic garbage on the beaches of the world (could you believe up to 46,000 pieces per square meter?), and dissecting marine animals and birds to show evidence of the fatal ingestion of plastic from small bits to cigarette lighters. Even the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the UN Environment Program, have matched the media with reports summarizing the anecdotal evidence.

So far, there has been no structured scientific study of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, nor its cousins in other parts of the world’s oceans. No one doubts the ubiquitous ugliness of plastic litter, on both land and sea, nor its potential for harm. But the quantitative damage, and the cure, has been elusive so far. Perhaps the Crowley expedition will be a first step at scoping the extent of the problem and pointing to a practical remedy.

Another adventurer, David de Rothschild, thinks the big plastic problem might be a big opportunity. His boat, Plastiki, being built here of recycled plastic, will float on 12,000 discarded plastic bottles. De Rothschild hopes to set sail for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch this fall to make the point that plastic garbage can be recycled, and reused.