June 13, 2010
By Tyson Bottenus
My father had a very sycophantic face when I told him last fall that I would be going out with SEA to look for plastic pollution in the North Atlantic gyre.
"You graduated from college so you could look at other people's garbage?"
"No", I said, flailing around emphatically, "You don't understand. You don't understand. You don't understand!"
I didn't understand.
I didn't understand what plastic pollution looked like, how it floats and where it goes. I didn't understand the effects it was having on marine life. I didn't understand how much plastic we wasted and also how vital and useful plastic can be if it's used responsibly. I just didn't understand.
I graduated from the University of Rhode Island with degrees in Geological Oceanography and Marine Policy. Among other subjects, I studied the eroding coastlines of New England and how climate change will affect these shorelines. Every week – rain or shine, snow or sun – I would accompany graduate students down to the beach to determine the volume of sand Rhode Island's beaches had lost after a particular storm event. Mostly, these beaches grew smaller.
As we drew up beach profiles, we ignored the matted piles of synthetic fishing lines anchored to the beachface. We ignored plastic bottles with sun-bleached labels, slowly getting buried in the dunes, becoming part of the geologic record. We ignored bottle caps and balloon ribbons in the wrack line, tangled with the seaweed and shells.
Friends would ask me about the "garbage patch" as if it was a newly discovered continent. You can see it from space, right? It's an island, yeah? So you can walk on it? I was the next Columbus.
If only I understood! If only I knew then how ubiquitous plastic was in the global environment, how it was collecting right beneath our nose, between our toes and on our shores. A 2005 study found that more than half of all human-derived debris that washed up along Atlantic beaches was composed of plastic. The number of stranded plastic particles is six times denser if you visit Mediterranean coasts. The science is becoming more and more clear: although the world's sandy coastlines are eroding away, they're accruing more and more plastic.
I became a coastal geologist because I was concerned for the fate of coastal denizens like myself. Coastal erosion is a huge problem and one that will leave many folks without their homes and their livelihoods. But plastic pollution is just as troubling, not just for us, but for the other creatures we happen to share that environment with.
