How do we study ocean plastic?

Since my voyage to the North Pacific to study plastic, I think the most frequent question I get is: “How big is the garbage patch?”.  What a simple question, with such a complex answer! First, I explain our voyage like drawing a line across a sheet of paper… how much can you learn about the paper by just looking at just that line?? The Pacific Ocean is HUGE, and so is its plastic problem.  It is going to take decades of research to get a better idea of how much plastic is out there.  Secondly, the amount of plastic is always fluctuating, with new plastic being added, and old plastic sinking or leaving the gyre and finding it’s way back to land.  Thirdly, it is hard to study plastic at sea.  Some floats, some sinks, some is ingested by marine life… how do you come up with a size of the problem?

Scientists are often limited by the technology that is available to them.  Perhaps someone will come along with a brilliant new innovation to determine the scope of the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch.  For now, the data set grows, giving us a bigger, but still incomplete image.  This is how we studied plastic as sea:

Neuston Net: This net is traditionally used to study plankton, the microscopic community of animals and algae adrift in the ocean currents.  The fine mesh of this net lets water pass through, but traps the copepods, pteropods, salps, and other alien-like creatures that call the surface currents their home within its folds.  Nowadays, this net is also frequently used to study ocean plastic.  We typically did neuston tows 4 times a day in the gyre, always towing at 2 anutical miles per hour for 30 minutes so all of your samples could be compared.

Manta Net: This is a neiston net with 2 fiberglass wings on the sides to stabilize it in rough weather.  Similarly to the neuston net, it collects samples from the surface only.

MOCNESS (Multiple Opening and Closing Net with Environmental Sensing System)

This beast carries up to 9 nets on its heavy frame (we used 5).  These nets are programmed to openand close at different depths, allowing us to collect discrete samples not only at the surface, but at various depths as well! We towed the MOCNESS down to 10 meters (~30ft) and found plastic in every net!  Looking just at the surface does not give you a complete picture of how much plastic is out there!

Stay tuned, next time I’ll write more about what we found :O)

All Aboard!!

Meet the Robert C Seamans:

On October 2, 2012, this ship became my home.  She stretches 134 feet stern to bow, and her sails tower 115 feet in the air.  She was our shelter, our life support, holding all the resources that would sustain us during our 36 day voyage from San Diego, California to Honolulu, Hawaii.

Our holds were packed tight with provisions, hammocks bulging with fruit swinging on deck,  a reefer stacked tight with produce, and below decks a cavernous maze of cans.  This is no sailing yacht, oh no! This girl was built for scientific research!  Equipped with a wet and a dry lab, flow through water systems, and a hydrowinch capable of sending gear thousands of meters underwater, this ship collects scientific data 24/7.  It takes 38 people, working round the clock, to keep the ship sailing (or motoring), food cooking, and data collecting.

When the June crew call was emailed out to SEA alumni, over 200 applicants vied for a mere 26 volunteer vacancies, alongside 12 professional scientists and sailors.  Those who were selected to join the shop ranged in age from 22 to 65.  The eldest sailor aboard, Pat Keoughan (65), qualified for medicare the day she boarded!  The first time she sailed with SEA was in 1980 as a student, and this time she returned as an outreach educator, answering daily questions sent from 10 schools K-12 across the country.   Among us were mothers, fathers, a hospitalist, a rocket scientist, educators, scientists, students, farmers, all of us wanderers, all of us thirsty for adventure, all of us willing to leave behind loved ones, internet, and land for 5 weeks to study plastic in the North Pacific Gyre.

Stay tuned to learn more about how we studied plastic at sea!

Week 19: Into the Gyre

Start out by closing your eyes and trying to imagine a world without plastic.

Having trouble? It’s hard! The stuff is everywhere! How would we brush our teeth, store our food or use the internet without plastic? Yet, plastics are relatively new to human culture. Talk to your grandparents and they can tell you about a world with milkmen, glass bottles and food wrapped in wax paper. The smorgasbord of cheap plastic goods we find around us today, from toys to bags and bottles, are the products of “throw away living”, the ideal of disposability that didn’t pop up until the 1950s. Now, Americans go through two million plastic soda bottles every five minutes! The amount of waste we create is staggering. So where does it all go?

Almost every piece of plastic we have ever made is still with us today. Most of it sits in landfills, some has been incinerated, and some, inevitably, ends up in the ocean. When it does it usually congregates in one of the five major gyres, or rotating ocean currents. As coastal and equatorial currents rotate around these gyres the middle, like the eye of a storm, remains calm. Once plastic gets there, it doesn’t leave.

80% of ocean plastic comes from land. Any walk through Boston will tell you that our waste disposal system is not perfect. Trash barrels overflow, bottles lay discarded on curbs, and plastic bags blow like tumbleweeds through the streets. The escapees and misfits from the waste stream of over 7 billion people can work its way into storm drains, beaches and rivers, which all lead to the sea. Other minor sources include offshore activities (military, fishing, drilling, etc.) and natural disasters (tsunamis, hurricanes, etc.). In addition, it was completely legal to dump plastic in the ocean until 1988!

Last fall, as a volunteer researcher on the Plastics at SEA expedition, I headed to the middle of the North Pacific Gyre to take a closer look at this mid-ocean plastic and its effects on marine life. For the next month or so I want to take you on a journey into the gyre, and tell you what it was like to see the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch first hand.