On Tuesday, the New York Times published an article on the North Pacific Gyre called “Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash.” Written by Lindsey Hoshaw, it was the culmination of a $10,000 freelance journalism project* in which she visited the gyre with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. Unfortunately, this NYT article was far below their usual standards. Not only did it not add anything new to the discussion, but it significantly misrepresented the state of the science, presenting broad estimates & conjecture as facts.

I sent a list of corrections to the New York Times, and I am republishing them here as well. They are in the order they appear in the article. Because there are so many, I have kept each explanation brief, but please ask in the comments if you would like elaboration. Thanks to my SIO colleagues Kristen Marhaver and Mike Navarro for their suggestions!

In this remote patch of the Pacific Ocean, hundreds of miles from any national boundary, the detritus of human life is collecting in a swirling current so large that it defies precise measurement.

The gyre is not a current, but a lack of currents. Please see Pete’s explanation of convergence zones for more detail.

…an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas.

There is no evidence for this. There certainly is a lot of trash, but there have been no measurements of either the trash’s total area or its growth rate.

But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.

There is evidence for debris in some other areas of the Pacific, namely in the California Current, off Japan, and in the Alaskan Gyre, but there are few measurements from the southern hemisphere. A few studies have studied macrodebris – big stuff floating around or washed up on islands – but I am not aware of any microdebris studies there. And again, the gyre is defined by a LACK of currents, not “heavy currents.”

Scientists say the garbage patch is just one of five that may be caught in giant gyres scattered around the world’s oceans.

This is a very poor description of oceanic circulation. There are five major gyres, but lots of minor ones (e.g., the Alaskan Gyre). There is no evidence for all five major oceanic gyres containing large amounts of trash – only the North Atlantic and North Pacific have been studied. It certainly could be the case, but we don’t know yet.

Millions, billions, trillions and more of these particles are floating in the world’s trash-filled gyres.

As above, there is no evidence for all gyres being filled with trash. Also, though I realize writing is trying to be poetic, we do not know how many particles there are, but there may not be “trillions.”

Scientists…say that fish tissues contain some of the same chemicals as the plastic. The scientists speculate that toxic chemicals are leaching into fish tissue from the plastic they eat.

This is highly misleading. Fish tissues may contain pollutants, but no current evidence that they contain chemicals transferred from ingestion of plastic. There is only one study of this kind, and it was done on birds in the laboratory. To be fair, the article did say “speculate,” but it should have been clearer on the current state of the science.

Fish that feed on plankton ingest the tiny plastic particles.

We do not know if significant numbers or important species of fish are ingesting plastic. We are studying this now, and it continues to be unclear.

The researchers say that when a predator — a larger fish or a person — eats the fish that eats the plastic, that predator may be transferring toxins to its own tissues, and in greater concentrations since toxins from multiple food sources can accumulate in the body.

There is no current evidence of this, particularly since food species of fish (e.g., tuna) do not inhabit the gyre. The gyre is a biological desert – it is an area of very low productivity and there are very few large fish there. Top predators certainly do accumulate toxins like methylmercury, but that is not related to plastic ingestion.

“I saw much higher concentrations of trash in the Pacific garbage patch than in the Sargasso,” Ms. Monteleone said, while acknowledging that she might not have found the Atlantic gyre.

The Sargasso Sea is in the North Atlantic Gyre, and nearly synonymous with it, so I don’t know what this means. It might be possible to be in part of the North Atlantic Gyre without seeing the seaweed Sargassum, but it is impossible to be in the Sargasso Sea without being in the North Atlantic Gyre.

Water samples from February contained twice as much plastic as samples from a decade ago.

This is a very difficult claim to make without controlling for the medium- and small-scale variation of plastic abundance. Even in the same year, some areas have little plastic and some areas have a lot of plastic. Without controlling for these variations, the increase in plastic can’t be measured accurately.

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*If you’re interested in how the story was funded, I recommend checking out Hoshaw’s fundraising page at Spot.us, as well as Megan Garber’s critical article at the Columbia Journalism Review and John Zhu’s thoughtful blog post.

Check out footage from the SEAPLEX SIO communications team, now with narration!

Download high-resolution photos and video free from the main SEAPLEX website.  There’s video footage of trash, instrumentation, and SEAPLEX scientists at work. There’s also high-res photos – most of them have already been posted to the blog but there are some new ones. I’m partial to this one of gooseneck barnacles and anemones on a piece of rope.

Please feel free to use these materials in your classroom, outreach activities, or blog – that’s what they’re there for!

Here’s another new SEAPLEX video, this one from footage taken by SIO’s own Josh Jones and Mario Aguilera. You can see all the different oceanographic instruments in action, and a selection of debris laid out on deck.

We have added a Frequently Asked Questions page! Take a look here.

Annie Crawley, the videographer and photographer on SEAPLEX with Project Kaisei, has posted her first video! It looks great, and you can see us in action.

We’re all decompressing and unpacking and getting used to life on shore. (What? We have to do our OWN dishes?!) But looking at our amazing photos makes the transition to normal life much easier. Check out the SEAPLEX set on Scripps’ Flickr page and the Project Kaisei Flickr (includes photos from the vessel Kaisei as well) for a look back at SEAPLEX highlights.

Here’s some of my favorites:

Miriam (yep, that's me) measuring plastic on the ocean's surface. See the little white flecks?

Lucky the dog trapped in a ghost net!

Jars of debris preserved for analysis.

Assuming that no one suddenly has some extra time and the computers are still set up, this is the last blog from the SEAPLEX cruise.  However, please join the Google Group so that we can let you know if there are new blog postings about results or other SEAPLEX related news.  Thanks so much for following the trip!

Miriam Goldstein writes:

Last night at around 3 a.m., I was awakened by Lara whispering that the best thing ever was happening outside and that I really, really wanted to get up. I staggered outside in my stripy pajamas and was greeted by fiery bioluminescence erupting from our wake and from each whitecap all the way to the horizon. Above in the perfectly dark sky, the stars mirrored the glowing sea. I have no words for the beauty and the glory of it.

When I was growing up near the Gulf of Maine, my parents cautioned us to never turn our backs to the ocean. They meant that we shouldn’t get caught by surprise by a big wave or a rip tide, but I think this advice should extend to the lovely parts of the ocean as well as the scary parts. The ocean is the cradle of life on Earth, filled with infinite variability, and we’ve only explored a tiny fraction of it. There are so many mysteries to explain, so many depths to plumb. Even the humblest seaside tidepool contains animals barely known to science.

So to all who followed along with SEAPLEX, and who are intrigued by the big, wet, and blue – please don’t turn your backs to the ocean. Perhaps someday missions like SEAPLEX will become obsolete, and ocean science will be done for the sheer joy of discovery instead of the necessity of
understanding what our species has wrought.

But for now, we are landing with three weeks of hard work safely stowed in hard drives and formalin-filled jars, and will retire to our respective labs to understand what exactly we found.

We’ll continue to post sporadic updates to this blog as they occur. Many thanks to all who followed along and commented on our adventures. Many more thanks to our supporters: Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, UC Ships funds, Project Kaisei, Scripps Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation, Mullin Fund, and San Diego Association of Women in Science. And the most thanks to the captain and crew of the R/V New Horizon, without whom we would have been truly adrift.

Flying squid are difficult to photograph. However, SEAPLEX did wish to
satisfy the many requests for images of them leaping from the water. You
need to look closely. It honestly does not due the event justice.

Our second post today is from Pete Davison.

He writes:

The past two weeks of the SEAPLEX cruise have been spent far offshore in oligotrophic (nutrient-poor) water. In the California Current closer to shore, the nutrients required for plant growth are present in the surface water. This cold, nutrient-rich water has been recently upwelled from the deep by the action of winds blowing south along the coast. The growth of phytoplankton near the surface depletes the nutrients as the water warms up. Primary productivity is a measure of the rate of growth of phytoplankton. It is typically measured in grams of carbon per square meter per day. The carbon comes from photosynthesis as the plants change CO2 to O2 with energy from the sun. The winds eventually push the warmer, nutrient-depleted surface water offshore to the west. The position of the SEAPLEX trawls has been marked on a satellite map of annual primary productivity from our study area in the image below.

Phytoplankton are consumed by zooplankton, which are in turn eaten by larger predators. Changes in the pattern of food availability delineate pelagic habitat changes, and are reflected in the communities of animals that live there. The amount of available food also determines the quantity of animals (biomass) that can be supported in the habitat.

We have been collecting very small volumes of zooplankton and fish at Stations 2, 3, and 4 that correspond to the low productivity of the habitat we are sampling in comparison to Station 1 in the California Current. We have also been catching different species of animals that reflect the new habitat that we are sampling. This is clear in the photo below.

We separate the fish from the zooplankton at sea before preservation because two groups of animals are often studied by different scientists.  From the map, annual primary productivity at Station 1 is ~1 gram of carbon per square meter in comparison to ~0.3 grams of carbon per square meter at Station 4. We would expect a ratio of ~3.3 in the catch volume (assuming that the standing stock of animals is equal to annual growth). It can be seen that Station 1 had roughly four times the zooplankton volume and twice the fish volume as were found at Station 4. This is pretty close to our expectations.

Map of primarpy productivity in the Eastern North Pacific Ocean.   The SEAPLEX cruise track is overlayed on the map.  Station 1 is in the California Current region, an area of high primary productivty.  Stations 2, 3, and 4 are in the North Pacific Gyre, an area of low primary productivity.

Samples collected on the SEAPLEX cruise.  The samples were divided into zooplankton (left) and fish (right).  The jars in the back are from one trawl at station 1 in the California Current.  The jars in the front are from a similar trawl (same duration, same speed, same net, etc.) from Station 4 in the North Pacific Gyre.

The SEAPLEX cruise gets into port in Oregon today, where I believe that they are having a press conference.  There will be another press conference next week after everyone is back in San Diego.

Our first post today is from Jesse Dubler.

He writes:

What Can Our Readers Do to Make a Difference?

There are many ways to make a difference on this issue of plastic marine debris even though you may never have the opportunity to come out here to the gyre personally. I would encourage our readers to begin by visiting National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) excellent Marine Debris 101 website. As an alternative, you may want to check my own specialized clearinghouse that I have been developing over the past year, which focuses on disseminating information specifically related to microplastic marine debris. As this clearinghouse is very much under development, I would definitely welcome additional data not yet posted or volunteers to tackle various aspects under development.

If you would like to do something more tangible, you could check to see if you have a Coastal Cleanup Day event scheduled near you this coming September. In attending this one-day event, you will be joining thousands of other volunteers worldwide to pick up marine debris. You could also volunteer to collect nurdles, also known as industrial preproduction plastic pellets, on your local beach and ship them to Japan where their chemical properties would be analyzed and posted online under the auspices of project
International Pellet Watch.

For those with the business acumen, there may be promise in cleaning up some of the gyre. For instance, there is a possibility under investigation by Project Kaisei to detoxify and liquify the plastic debris into a source of fuel that would ultimately subsidize the clean-up. Further studies of the volume of the debris as well as the behavior of plastics in this area are necessary to better formulate a concrete action plan. That said, there have been instances where debris has been profitably converted into energy as seen with ghost nets in Hawaii and the New England region.

Of course, if you are in the unique position of being able to generate or otherwise provide funding for additional scientific expeditions to study the gyre in Pacific (or any of the other six gyres, for that
matter), such research would be enormously helpful in better understanding this global phenomenon.