Science Results : Daily Update

Daily Update | Current SEA Research

July 13, 2010

By Giora Proskurowski

Beyond 200 miles from land (in international waters), the ocean has no advocate. For many Americans, their interaction with the open ocean is limited to peeking out the airplane window on a trans-Atlantic flight to Europe before settling into the second movie. The open ocean is not directly in anyone's backyard, and thus there is no knee jerk NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) grassroots reaction to changes.

There is no state senator refusing to locate a new sewage treatment plant in her district, no congressman in Washington, D.C., voting on behalf of the open ocean. Thus, the open ocean is subjected to the effects of humanity on every mile of coastline, and the millions of square miles inland, without any ability to regulate this impact. It is our hope that this expedition and this website are acting to promote public awareness and advocacy of the importance and health of the oceans.

What can you do? First and foremost, re-evaluate your usage of disposable, single-use plastics. There is no way for us to clean up these huge areas of the ocean. The ocean has an amazing capacity to self regulate, and will eventually degrade the plastic that is out here. However, we cannot keep adding to the total. It is going to take a societal shift in behaviors to make this happen.

While plastics are incredibly useful and have made possible many of the greatest breakthroughs in technology and standard of living, they have also made our lives lazier. We now buy a bottle of water rather than use a canteen. We buy individually wrapped bags of mini-carrots, instead of buying carrots that are straight from the ground and have to be washed. There are countless examples of plastic making our lives marginally easier, but not really any better. And, as we've discovered 128 times – once for every net tow – there is a real cost to the planet for this choice.

Second, give the ocean a voice. Become an advocate for the health and protection of the oceans. There are plenty of worthy non-profits, including SEA, that work toward this goal and will gratefully accept your volunteered time (and/or money).

It is my hope that the work and science that was done by this amazing group of SEA volunteers and crew will lead to other opportunities to better understand the role, fate, and threat of plastics in our oceans.