Sailing the Synthetic Seas... page 4
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Latitude: 32 46.18 North; Longitude 170 03.41 West
The afternoon lull was broken up by another sighting of a tangled rope mass. We dropped an anchored buoy to mark our spot and quickly lowered our sails as Paschal and Ernst suited up with dive gear, while the rest of us did our best to keep an eye and a finger pointed toward the rapidly drifting net. Relocating a piece of debris, with strong currents and winds blowing from all directions, has a needle-in-a-haystack-like quality at times, but we managed to find the floating culprit. As we pulled the rope on board, dozens of fish and crabs came scuttling out. We scooped them up by hand and threw them in a mini aquarium to observe and photograph before releasing them.
A concerned family member wanted to know if it’s safe for us to be eating fish out here in the midst of this plastic soup. This is the big question. The truth is, we don’t really know for sure. There hasn’t been enough research yet on the impact of chemicals from plastic on living organisms; i.e., do the pollutants attracted by plastic particles in turn migrate into the organisms consuming them?
Pollutants become increasingly more concentrated as they work their way up the food chain. So, the bigger the fish, the more likelihood of it having eaten smaller, contaminated fish and absorbing the sum total of their toxins. So we’re probably way safer eating the small fish that we have out here than having sushi in Los Angeles.
Your safest bet: Feast on minnows.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Latitude: 33 45.655 North; Longitude 160 21.999 West
The day began slow. Moore and Eriksen stood quietly at the bow, ready to net any floating trash. Soon, they were pulling up large pieces every other minute. We’d happened on a Langmuir windrow, a series of circular counter currents that meet, sweeping mixed layer sub-surface materials to the top into a sort of oceanic river, visible as a slick on the ocean’s surface. In a perfect world, this would consist mainly of marine life and natural nutrients. This one had a visible line of floating debris. According to Captain Moore, this was the second most dramatic windrow he’d ever seen.
After anchoring and waiting for nightfall, we slipped into the cold waters and watched a rich scene of underwater life: the dark night thick with unusual creatures. Though I have little experience with evening seas, the image of this being an “oceanic desert,” with little life outside of jellies and plankton, made me feel safe.
A large fish swam right underneath us. No, make that a mako shark, boldly approaching. Paschal kicked it away with his flipper. I panicked and made a beeline for the boat, doing exactly what I was told later that I should never do. Nonetheless, I set a personal speed record.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Latitude: 36 23.448 North; Longitude: 150 15.747 West
People constantly ask if there isn’t some way to scoop, net or filter out this waste. The problem is the scale. In terms of area, it’s like suggesting we sweep the U.S. or sift the Sahara desert. And, as people have seen from our sample images, much of this debris is composed of small pieces, fragments, that require a fine mesh to remove. Which means removing tons of plankton as well, the basis of the entire marine food chain. If only the debris were nicely contained in a big “trash island,” perhaps we could remove it. But it’s spread out over an incomprehensibly huge area. The terms “garbage patch” or “Texas-sized trash heap” conjure up tangible areas, when in fact this “plastic soup” extends throughout the entire gyre. Add to this the unknowns—buildup of plastic on the floor and plastic’s presence through the water column—to the expense and difficulty of getting here, and the impossibility of cleaning up the gyre becomes clear. We need to focus our efforts on prevention; cleanup is simply not feasible, not yet, at least.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Latitude: 35 41.046 North; Longitude: 147 38.013 West
We’re back in the area that first inspired Captain Moore’s mission back in 1997. For two solid hours, we fished as fast as we could, pulling up floats, toothbrushes, plastic and glass bottles, a golf ball, a billiard ball, an unused glue stick and several rope boluses filled with crabs and tiny striped fish. But most appalling was the plastic confetti: an endless stream of delicate, white snowflakes, like plastic powder coating the ocean’s surface.
We spotted our first “ghost net” early in the evening, weighing more than a ton. What appeared from the surface a sizable, tangled nest of mismatched nets and imbedded debris was just the tip of the iceberg. Under water, this behemoth sank heavily, providing shelter to an array of marine life. It is a nautical nightmare in the making with the potential to kill the endangered Hawaiian monk seal, the only tropical seal, and many other creatures, including corals.
