Our post today is from SEAPLEX chief scientist and Scripps grad student, Miriam Goldstein.
Miriam writes:
Some days out here, the ocean is as smooth and gentle as a pond. The ocean heaves gently, glassy water rippling over the swells. These are the doldrums and I am glad that the New Horizon does not depend on the wind. But with the power of our inflatable small boat and a couple gallons of gasoline, the glassy surface changes from a sailing liability to a scientific opportunity.
On a hot, perfect day a few days ago, we took the small boat out to get a flying fish-eyed view of the gyre. Doug Woodring from Project Kaisei, Mario Aguilera from Scripps, Matt Durham the resident technician, and I (I’m Miriam, the chief scientist) got our dip nets and our coolers and set out to capture some marine debris. I’m interested in the animals that live on the debris, such as barnacles and crabs, so we aimed to get samples of debris for my science and for Project Kaisei’s outreach efforts.
The water was a brilliant deep blue, and utterly translucent. (Our CTD cast had told us that the water was so clear that some light made it 450 feet down. Off California, light only made it to around 300 feet.) We cruised around, picking up a plastic bucket and some hand-sized pieces of debris. It was silent and peaceful except for the noise of New Horizon’s winch in the distance.
The next time we cut the small boat’s engine to pick up a piece of trash, we noticed that the ocean’s surface was covered in polka dots of tiny plastic. Though we’d been pulling up plastic in our nets for days, seeing it freely floating about, not bunched up in a net, was shocking. The magnitude of the problem suddenly came crashing down on me – how could there be this much plastic just floating in a random patch of ocean a thousand miles from land?
Beneath the plastic, the fragile gelatinous inhabitants of the gyre went about their daytime business. I recognized salps and pyrosomes, but there were other, stranger creatures that I didn’t know. Many of these animals are not well known to science since they are so delicate – we don’t see them in our nets since they get shredded into unrecognizable goop, and not too many people go scuba diving in the middle of nowhere. These poorly understood animals are most likely interacting with the plastic in some way, but we don’t know how.
My science instincts kicked in and we jetted back to New Horizon to retrieve my quadrat. The quadrat is a really simple standard science tool – it’s just a square of PVC a meter across. To get an idea of how the little particles were spaced on the ocean’s surface, we drove the boat in a straight line, stopping at intervals to count the number of particles that fell inside the quadrat.
Though there were many quadrats with zero particles, there were also many particles with several. The most we counted in a square meter of the ocean’s surface was eleven tiny plastic bits, floating in an area about the size of a laundry basket.
That’s a lot of trash to have thousands of miles from land in a small bit of ocean, and we’ve seen many areas of ocean even more covered in small plastic bits. We’ve pulled up plastic in every single manta tow for the last thousand miles. But somehow, seeing the inhabitants of the gyre going about their gelatinous business underneath a sprinkling of plastic was the most disturbing thing I’ve yet seen.
Various forms of marine debris collected during the SEAPLEX cruise were displayed on the deck of the New Horizon.
Plastic bottles and smaller pieces of plastic were collected during a small boat deployment on August 14 during the SEAPLEX cruise. Photo taken by Jim Leicther.
Lara Dickens operates the A-frame during the deployment of the Oozeki net for a mid-water trawl. Photo taken by Jim Leichter.
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Just like the gentle flush of a barely working toilet, the metaphor for the gyre, these blogs are sucking me in. So — when can we expect to be able to read about the interpretation of the data the scientists are collecting? In what fora? Will there be any published outcomes written for the lay person?
Good job, all!
And thanks.
By: Nancy on August 15, 2009
at 1:31 pm
The results will definitely be shared with the public in a general audience format. However, at this point, I am not sure what that format will be. Regardless, I’m sure that the Scripps communications group will do a great job at getting the word out!
By: Alison Cawood on August 15, 2009
at 2:33 pm
The scale of this problem is difficult to comprehend. Will there be chemical analysis on the plastics recovered to determine the decade the plastics came from? I recently watched a program about the plastic washing ashore on Hawaiian islands and Albatross young starving due to parent birds feeding them the plastic. Some of the plastic that is washing ashore there goes back to the dawn of plastic production! Any chance to make correlations with the plastics found in the SEAPLEX expedition to determine what decades the plastic composition comes from. Is it older plastic or newer plastic?
By: Tara on August 15, 2009
at 1:54 pm
I have not heard any discussion where someone intends to address that specific question, but it would be very interesting! Since we will have the samples, I’m sure that it would be possible for someone to do some of that work. Also, I know that Miriam is planning on doing some analysis to determine which types of plastics are being found, which might address the age issue as well.
By: Alison Cawood on August 15, 2009
at 2:32 pm
Thanks for the picture of my mom !
By: Sophia P. on August 15, 2009
at 2:44 pm
Will anyone be posting on this blog when you return to land? I would like to see future postings regarding your findings. Your photos are great and really show that the garbage patch really does exist. What a sad reality.
Thanks again for all your efforts.
By: shasta daisy on August 15, 2009
at 4:01 pm
There will definitely be some way of communicating the results with the public, but I’m not sure what it will be yet. Stay tuned!
By: Alison Cawood on August 15, 2009
at 6:00 pm
Thanks for the picture of my sister! xoxo
By: Amie on August 16, 2009
at 1:04 am
That insihgt’s just what I’ve been looking for. Thanks!
By: Maralynn on December 13, 2011
at 1:18 am
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By: bsyjfdyrop on December 13, 2011
at 12:09 pm
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By: jjpngoeqy on December 15, 2011
at 2:36 am
It’s like watching our world falter and degrade before our very eyes.
You wrote beautifully, expressively… thank you for that. My heart was touched and I’m passing along to everyone I know.
I can’t believe we’ve polluted so much in so little time, and now, every second of every day, we’re manufacturing even more plastic exponentially.
I’m beginning to wonder if there really is a solution.
As for the fish – they HAVE to be eating the plastic… maybe spit some out, though… Will we see genetic aberrations? Will the most delicate and fragile species all die off?
Will there be plastic chemicals in every piece of fish we eat?
I look around, seeing your perfect deep blue waters in my mind, wondering if those pure waters will be gone with the wind in a very short time.
Well, they’re not so pure after all, are they? We couldn’t even harvest salt from those waters without plastic in every batch.
It has to be incredibly eye opening for all of you.
I hope we can find a solution…
By: Cdin on August 16, 2009
at 11:24 am
We don’t really know who is eating plastic or how much they are eating, so it isn’t really possible to know what will happen. That is why cruises like SEAPLEX are so important. If we don’t have the basic information, we can’t even begin to understand the impacts to the ecosystem or come up with any way to mitigate those impacts. It is also hard to know how the plastic will impact people. It depends on which types of fish are consuming the plastic and how much they are consuming. If the plastic is being consumed by organisms that are major food sources for something like tuna, then it is entirely possible that it will make it onto the plates of people.
By: Alison Cawood on August 17, 2009
at 1:51 pm
This is a very interesting research trip and blog. I was wondering if there are any pictures of the ocean surface with the debris in view. I saw only the one of the ghost net etc, then samples on board.
Thanks and safe journey home!
By: Steve Rothert on August 17, 2009
at 12:41 pm
The blog post SEAPLEX Day 11 Part 2 has picture of a net floating in the water and of some small pieces of plastic at the surface.
By: Alison Cawood on August 17, 2009
at 1:53 pm