Trash gyre location and currents

For those who wish to boldly go where just a handful of researchers has gone before, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation is now offering tickets to visit the Great Pacific Garbage Gyre.

In collaboration with Pangaea Explorations, a team of Algalita researchers will embark on a three week long scientific voyage through the Pacific Trash Vortex, a gyre of marine litter located roughly between 135° to 155°W to 42°N.

“We’ll be looking for changes in the accumulation of plastic in the North Pacific Gyre,” says Marcus Eriksen, who will lead the expedition’s research as Algalita’s Director of Project Development. “We suspect there’s greater accumulation, which means more harm to sea life and potentially to humans.”

The cost of each ticket is $10 000, and the net proceeds will be used to fund Algalita’s scientific research and educational outreach.

And even though you’re coughing up $10 000 for your fare, don’t expect a leisure cruise. The Sea Dragon, Pangaea’s 72-foot racing sloop, only have enough room for 14 people, including 4 professional crew members, and guests will be expected to help sail and maintain the vessel, stand watch during the night and cook up some hearty meals in the galley. To be considered for a spot on the Sea Dragon you must be fit enough to pull lines, raise sails and lift 1/3 of your weight. You must also be willing to get some very hands-on experience from garbage sorting.

“On this voyage, you’ll earn your sea legs and rough hands hauling in lines and hoisting sails, but you’ll also be “doing the science” side-by-side with researchers,” says Eriksen. “You’ll need to be fit as you prepare to trawl the sea, sort plastic, preserve samples and catalog it all.”

The ship leaves Hawaii on July 7 2011 and is expected to land in Vancouver on July 27.
To find out more and purchase your ticket, go to http://www.algalita.org/research/NorthPacificGyreVoyage.html

Concept of the recycled vac

Electrolux Launching new “Vac from the Sea” Initiative:

Stockholm, Sweden – It is a well known fact that the Pacific Ocean is chock full of garbage, so much in fact that there are actually “islands” which are comprised entirely of it. Electrolux has the intention of gathering up the plastic out of the worlds’ oceans, and converting it into brand new vacuum cleaners. This initiative, is known as “Vac from the sea”, has taken on the goal of bringing attention to the issue of plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean, while at the same time combating the problem of the scarcity of recycled plastics which are needed to create sustainable home goods.

The Vice President of Floor Care Environmental and Sustainability Affairs at Electrolux, Cecilia Nord, enlightens us on the plans over at Electrolux, “There are plastic islands, some several times the size of the state of Texas, floating in our oceans. Yet on land, we struggle to get hold of enough recycled plastics to meet the demand for sustainable vacuum cleaners. What the world needs now is a better plastic karma”

The general plan is to create a limited quantity of “green” vacuum cleaners from the plastic debris which is being collected from the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans, as well as the Mediteranean, Baltic and North seas. Anyone who is interested in the project can follow its progress on the Blog as well as on Facebook and can also find full details on how to become involved, should they wish to do so. These “green” vacuum cleaners are set to be put on display, in order to drum up support for the project.

We at AC tropical fish applaud the idea for its great symbolic value!!

If you’re an environmentally conscious golf enthusiast you probably cringe at the shear notion of playing golf near the shoreline or practise your swing onboard a yacht or cruise ship where the risk of your balls ending up in the ocean is high.

To remedy the problem with awol golf balls polluting our oceans, Barcelona based golf ball manufacturer Albus Golf has created a 100% biodegradable and non-toxic golf ball filled with fish food. According to the company, the outer part of the ball will biodegrade within 48 hours after ending up in the water, giving the oceanic fauna free access to the tasty fish food inside.

Around the globe, more and more costal regions outlaw the use of ordinary golf balls near the shore since they have a tendency to end up in the ocean where their durable plastic materials live on “forever”. Our ever increasing production of plastic and other materials that are difficult to break down have caused the formation of five enormous trash vortexes in the ocean; areas to where sea currents bring the floating debris we throw into our oceans and waterways each day. The largest of them, the Great Pacific Trash Vortex, currently covers an area twice the size of the continental U.S.

A group of conservationists and scientists are planning a research trip to the world’s largest rubbish pile; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Also known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, the Pacific Trash Vortex, or simply the Great Plastic Vortex; this gyre of marine litter has been gradually building over the last 60 years but we still know very little of this man-made monstrosity.

The expedition, headed by Hong Kong based entrepreneur and conservationist Doug Woodring, hopes to learn more about the nature of the vortex and investigate if it is possible to fish out the debris without causing even more harm.

“It will take many years to understand and fix the problem,” says Jim Dufour, a senior engineer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, who is advising the trip.

According to Dufour, research expeditions like this one are of imperative importance since establishing the extent of the problem is vital for the future health of the oceans.

“It [the expedition] will be the first scientific endeavour studying sea surface pollutants, impact to organisms at intermediate depths, bottom sediments, and the impacts to organisms caused by the leaching of chemical constituents in discarded plastic,” he says.

The research crew, which will pass through the gyre twice on their 50-day journey from San Francisco to Hawaii and back, are using a 150-foot-tall (45-metre-tall) ship – the Kaisei, which is Japanese for Ocean Planet. They will also be accompanied by a fishing trawler responsible for testing various methods of catching the garbage without causing too much harm to marine life.

“You have to have netting that is small enough to catch a lot but big enough to let plankton go through it,” Woodring explains.

Last year, building contractor and scuba dive instructor Richard Owen formed the Environmental Cleanup Coalition (ECC) to address the issue of the pollution of the North Pacific. A plan designed by the coalition suggests modifying a fleet of ships to clear the area of debris and form a restoration and recycling laboratory called Gyre Island.

Hopefully, the garbage can not only be fished up but also recycled or used to create fuel, but a long term solution must naturally involve preventing the garbage from ending up there in the first place.

”The real fix is back on land. We need to provide the means, globally, to care for our disposable waste,” says Dufour.

Despite being sponsored by the water company Brita and backed by the United Nations Environment Programme, the expedition is still looking for more funding to meet its two million US dollar budget. Since the enormous trash pile is located in international waters, no single government feels responsible for cleaning it up or funding research. Another problem is lack of awareness; since very few people ever even come close to this remote part of the ocean it is difficult to make the problem a high priority issue. A documentary will be filmed during the expedition in hope of making the public more aware of where the world’s largest garbage dump is actually located.

What is the Eastern Garbage Patch?

According to data from the United Nations Environment Programme, our oceans contain roughly 13,000 pieces of plastic litter per square kilometre of sea. However, this trash is not evenly spread throughout the marine environment – spiralling ocean currents located in five different parts of the world are continuously sucking in vast amounts of litter and trapping it there. Of these five different gyres, the most littered one is located in the North Pacific – the Eastern Garbage Patch.

The five major oceanic gyres.

The existence of the Eastern Garbage Patch was first predicted in a 1988 paper published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States. NOAA based their prediction on data obtained from Alaskan research carried out in the mid 1980s; research which unveiled high concentrations of marine debris accumulating in regions governed by particular patterns of ocean currents. Using information from the Sea of Japan, the researchers postulated that trash accumulations would occur in other similar parts of the Pacific Ocean where prevailing currents were favourable to the formation of comparatively stable bodies of water. They specifically indicated the North Pacific Gyre.

California-based sea captain and ocean researcher Charles Moore confirmed the existence of a garbage patch in the North Pacific after returning home through the North Pacific Gyre after competing in the Transpac sailing race. Moore contacted oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer who dubbed the region “the Eastern Garbage Patch” (EGP).

Twice the size of Texas

The Eastern Garbage Patch is located roughly 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N between Hawaii and mainland USA and is estimated to have grown to twice the size of Texas, even though no one knows for sure exactly how large the littered area really is. The garbage patch consists mainly of suspended plastic products that, after spending a long time in the ocean being broken down by the sun’s rays, have disintegrated into fragments so miniscule that most of the patch cannot be detected using satellite imaging.

Impact on wild-life and humans

The plastic soup resembles a congregation of zooplankton and is therefore devoured by animals that feed on zooplankton, such as jellyfish. The plastics will then commence their journey through the food chain until they end up in the stomachs of larger animals, such as sea turtles and marine birds. When ingested, plastic fragments can choke the unfortunate animal or block its digestive tract.

Plastics are not only dangerous in themselves, they are also known to absorb pollutants from the water, including DDT, PCB and PAHs, which can lead to acute poisoning or disrupt the hormonal system of animals that ingest them. This is naturally bad news for anyone who likes to eat marine fish and other types of sea food.

According to a new report jointly produced by UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and UN Environment Programme (Unep), merchant ships are to blame for 88 percent of the total marine littering in the world. According to the report, merchant ships deposit 5.6 million tonnes of litter in the ocean each year.

About 8 million pieces of marine litter enters our oceans each day and most of it is solid waste thrown overboard or accidently lost from ships. Right now, an average of 13,000 pieces of plastic litter is floating around per square kilometre of ocean waters, the report says.

The FAO-Unep report has been released right before next weeks’ World Oceans Conference in Manado, Indonesia where marine littering will be high on the agenda.

A majority of the litter from ships is fishing gear, which is either lost or intentionally abandoned in the water. Fishing gear now accounts for one tenth of all marine litter.

The rest consists of various debris, such as shipping containers, pallets, plastic covers, drums, wires and ropes. Accumulated oils are also dumped by ships; oils which can cause serious injury to marine life.

“Most fishing gear is not deliberately discarded but is lost in storms or strong currents or from’ gear conflicts’”, the report states. “For example, fishing with nets in areas where bottom-traps that can entangle them are already deployed.”

Unfortunately, lost and abandoned fishing gear will not stop fishing – they will continue to trap animals until they are broken down; a process which can take many years since modern fishing gear are made from highly durable synthetic materials. This is referred to as ghost fishing and is a major problem for aquatic species that need to surface regularly to breathe; a dolphin, turtle or seal caught in a net will suffocate and die. Lost fishing gears are also a problem for ships that become entangled in the equipment and are known to damage boats and cause accidents at sea.

While the report points a finger at merchant vessels, it also states that land-based sources are the main cause of marine littering in coastal regions.

UN recommends financial incentives and new technology

The report recommends using financial incentives to encourage fishers to bring old and damaged gear to port instead of dumping it. Fishers should also be given incentives to bring ghost nets recovered while fishing back to shore and to log and report items lost at sea. For this to work disposal facilities must be set up in ports and a report and recovery system must be established. The report also suggests providing ships with oversized, high-strength disposal bags to place discarded fishing gear in.

“A ‘no-blame’ approach should be followed with respect to liability for losses, their impacts, and any recovery efforts,” the report says.

New technologies – such as seabed imaging, geographic Positioning Systems (GPS), and transponders – can be used locate where lost or dumped fishing gear is present and recover it. Fishing ships could use GPS to mark locations where objects have been lost and weather monitoring technology could be used to predict there the stuff will go. It is also possible to attach transponders to fishing gear, shipping containers and other types or property known to frequently get lost at sea.

Weather monitoring technology can also reduce the risk of property getting lost at sea by altering captains in advance, e.g. to prevent them from deploying nets when unusually severe weather is on its way.

The study also recommends speeding up the development and commercial adoption of durable but bio-degradable fishing gear, including gear containing magnetic solutions.

International Convention

Ichiro Nomura, FAO assistant director general for fisheries and aquaculture, has called for industry and governments to take action to radically reduce the amount of lost and abandoned fishing gear in the sea. If nothing is done, fishing gear will continue to accumulate in the world’s oceans and their impact on marine ecosystems will become more and more severe. Nomura stressed that the problem must be addressed on multiple fronts and include both littering prevention and restoration measures.

FAO is currently involved in an ongoing review of Annex V of the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL) as regards fishing gear and shore side reception facilities by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).