Back from the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”

Image of the Day: The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”

“Our human footprint is now apparent in even one of the most remote places on the planet” —Doug Woodring, director of Project Kaisei (The co-sponsors of the Seaplex study.)

In the centers of our oceans (cf, North Pacific Ocean Gyre), one liter of seawater contains about a billion phytoplankton cells, and 6 billion microscopic pieces of plastic. FEWW

On Aug. 11, while deployed in a small boat, SEAPLEX researchers encountered a large ghost net with tangled rope, net, plastic, and various biological organisms.  The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” extends across a 1,700-mile long stretch of the ocean. Photo: J. Leichter/Scripps Institution of Oceanography/Handout

Charles Moore: Sailing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch [Feb 2009]

See also:

• The Garbage Patch [You Tube Video]
• Algalita Photo Gallery
• Pt. 1 “Plastic in the Ocean” Interview with Capt. Charles Moore [You Tube Video]
• Pt. 2 “Plastic in the Ocean” Interview with Dr. Marcus Eriksen

SEAPLEX (Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition)

From August 2-21, a group of doctoral students and research volunteers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego and Project Kaisei were on an expedition aboard the Scripps research vessel New Horizon exploring the problem of plastic in the North Pacific Ocean Gyre. The Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) focused on a suite of critical scientific questions. How much plastic is accumulating, how is it distributed, and how is it affecting ocean life?

More Photos: http://mediabank.ucsd.edu/seaplexhires/
News: http://sio.ucsd.edu/Expeditions/Seaplex/

If having 6 time more plastics than plankton in the ocean doesn’t make you want to cry, you don’t need oceans.

Related Links:

• WILD FACTS SERIES: Our Oceans Are Dying!

• Southern Ocean already losing ability to absorb CO₂
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part IV :  Researchers found evidence of corrosive water about 20 miles off the west coast of North America from Canada to Mexico.
• Human carbon emissions make oceans corrosive : ‘Carbon dioxide spewed by human activities has made ocean water so acidic that it is eating away at the shells and skeletons of starfish, coral, clams and other sea creatures …’
• The Eight Steps that Help Kill More of Our Fish : How Your Car’s Exhaust Emissions Helps Create Dead Zones and Kill Our Fish.
• Global warming could starve oceans of oxygen: study : Areas of the eastern Atlantic and Pacific Oceans with low amounts of dissolved oxygen have expanded in the past 50 years, apparently in line with rising temperatures.
• The Floating Toxic Garbage Island : A patch of garbage twice as large as the continental United States and dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch floats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean in North Pacific Gyre.
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part III : Tourism: The Most Destructive Human Activity After Warfare
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part II : Major Problems: Fertilizer Runoff; Tourism; Coastal Developments [and Ocean Warming due to climate change]
• Oceans, Where Life Started, Are Dying – Part I : Our Oceans Are Now Dying!