July 13, 2010
By Wendy Kordesch
Every couple of days a news bulletin is posted on the doghouse corkboard with snippets of news from shore: Germany defeated Uruguay in the World Cup. LeBron James signs with the Miami Heat. The oil in the Gulf is still spewing into the Gulf.
Often the news includes a plastics update. One of the latest bulletins details a plan by the vacuum cleaner company Electrolux to help remove plastic pollution from the Pacific. They plan to harvest plastic from this free-floating garbage island to build their vacuum cleaners. If I read this a month or two ago I might have liked the plan. Recycling plastics trash from the ocean sounds great – helps Mother Nature while making a profit.
Yesterday as I read the article during midwatch (2300-0300 hours), my jaw fell open and my mind filled with questions. Is this project really feasible? Is it a publicity stunt? What kind of plastic are vacuum cleaners made of? Has weathering been considered? How would organisms living on the plastic be managed? What about microorganisms living inside?
I would estimate the total volume of plastic collected in the past month of tows is equal to enough material for maybe one vacuum cleaner. Plastic bits picked from each tow are stored in a tin the size of an Altoids container. The plastic pieces are not homogeneous; they have been a combination of mostly weathered and brittle monofilament line, irregular fragments, and sheet-like material. Separating plastic from biological material scooped up in nets is not easy. All of us have spent hours hunched over a sieve using tweezers to pick plastic bits wedged behind squirming copepods and scraggly Sargassum.
On one hand, it is encouraging to hear that a large corporation like Electrolux is interested in ocean cleanup efforts. In fact, I think this a step in the right direction. Plastic pollution is not the result of one party in particular and responsibility to clean it up should be shared by everyone. Large corporations and individual consumers should both be aware of the effects of our resource use and be held accountable for the fate of plastics in the environment. The biggest issue I have with Electrolux's plan (along with many articles of the same vein) is the use and spread of inaccurate information regarding the "Texas-sized vortex of trash."
The actual concentration of plastics in the ocean is, in fact, shocking – there is no need for exaggeration. Two weeks ago I went swimming in a part of the ocean where astronauts on the space station were closer to us than anyone else on Earth. Around the same time we counted 23,000 pieces of plastic in a single 900-meter-long tow. I spent one day marveling over the remoteness of our journey and the next disappointed at just how far the effects of our pollution have reached.
I have observed the Atlantic garbage "patch" for the past 34 days and the majority of the time it looks exactly like being at sea anywhere else on the planet: a 360-degree expanse of blue water. There have been no floating refrigerators or anything remotely resembling a trash island. Occasionally we do see larger objects floating by (yesterday: a hiking boot, a yogurt lid, fragments of buckets), but mostly the plastic is just fractions of an inch in size and can only be seen on the surface on a calm day.
The use of plastics is essential to daily life – no one is trying to deny this – but there is absolutely no reason it should be found in the most far-flung recesses of our oceans. The concentration of plastics in the oceans should be zero. It was, as recently as 50 years ago.
The problem with inaccurate and embellished reporting about plastic debris is that it can ultimately prove unproductive for industrial entrepreneurs that think the ocean can be "cleaned". We have just covered 400,000 square miles of ocean and have archived over 48,000 pieces of plastic – roughly equal to about four total pounds of plastic. Solutions to prevent this kind of debris from reaching these remote waters need to start with education (not clean up!) of both consumers and businesses.
As our trip comes to a close I realize my perspective on human impacts on the world today is different than when I first crossed the gangway onto the Cramer. I have made great friends with an impressive and eclectic collection of shipmates and I have once again had an amazing journey sailing with SEA. We are truly explorers on a voyage to an undersampled part of the ocean, and what I will take with me is a responsibility to pass on this unique knowledge and perspective. As stewards of the ocean, the 33 of us are excited to return to our home towns to share what we have experienced.
