Journey to the Center of Floating Junk Earth
It’s one thing to be appalled by the monstrous accumulation of millions of square miles of plastic waste spinning slowly in the North Pacific gyre. It’s another thing entirely to build an ocean-going vessel out of plastic waste and set out across the sea to call attention to the environmental catastrophe.
That’s exactly what two men, one from California and one from Hawaii, are now doing. The two — Marcus Eriksen, a Ph.D., Gulf War vet and director of research and education for the Long Beach-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, and Joel Paschal, a former businessman in Hawaii and a one-time employee of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) — are sailing across the Pacific in a homemade vessel, Kon Tiki-style, to “raise awareness about plastic fouling our oceans.”
And foul it is: the “garbage soup” swirling in the North Pacific gyre stretches across some five million square miles, an area twice as large as the continental U.S. Worse still, the floating dump is steadily growing and threatening every level of the food chain … yes, all the way up to humans.
The big chunks of plastic — bottles, six-pack rings, caps and more — entangle wildlife or choke creatures that swallow them. But the smaller bits — broken-down fragments and microscopic nurdles from plastics manufacturing — are ingested without immediate harm. It’s then that the longer-lasting damage begins: the tiny swallowed bits attract DDT, PCBs and other poisons, and gradually accumulate in the tissues of jellyfish, fish and other creatures. Sooner or later, people end up eating that poisoned plastic too.
It might be “out of sight” for most of us, but Eriksen and Paschal are determined to make it “out of mind” no longer. That’s why they’re sailing from Long Beach to Hawaii in an ocean-going junk made of actual junk: a discarded Cessna cockpit rigged with plastic waste to 15,000 plastic bottles. The vessel’s name? “Junk,” of course.
Throughout their journey, Eriksen and Paschal will be taking ocean surface samples, reporting on their findings and blogging about their experiences. Through the Algalita foundation, they’re also seeking sponsors for their message-in-a-bottle campaign. After they finish their voyage, they plan to take those messages on a tour of the West Coast before delivering them to state and local lawmakers.
I’ve seen a lot of articles about this mess floating in the ocean, why are there so few photos? Something that huge must be easy to take a picture of other than the occasional entangled sea animal. People are visual, show some nasty pictures to get people worked up about this.
[...] gyre stretches across some five million square miles, an area twice as large as the continental U.S.read more | digg [...]
There’s a good side to this. If we cover the ocean surfaces with more reflective garbage (such as metals, say), then they would reflect the thermal radiation from the sun, reducing the net heat input onto the planet.
This might actually end up reducing the effect of global warming.
So, let’s go ahead and pollute all we want. But instead of those paper cups that we drink our cokes and coffees from, we should use aluminium cans. (The obvious discomfort of using Al cans to drink warm coffee notwithstanding)
Here’s a link to some photos…
http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n2/htdocs/oh_this_is_great.php
It’s not like it’s a mountain of garbage you could walk on. It’s a soup of degraded plastics some of which are microscopic. It’s way the hell out in the middle of nowhere so it’s not exactly like people can pop out for some snapshots.
Search around for the ViceTV series these guys did on an expedition of theirs out to the gyre. It’s a bit anti-climactic in the end but well-produced nonetheless.
Here’s a dumb idea, especially mentioned here, but doesn’t all the garbage, being lighter in color than the sea, help reflect some sunlight back towards space, helping, even a little bit, combat global warming? If we dumped LOTS of styrofoam peanuts in the sea, wouldn’t that help more? - Just a crazy idea…
Couldn’t someone go and “fish” the plastic waste out and then sell it to recycling plants?
What the hell???? This thing gets bigger every time I read about it. WTF? The largest before this, that I read, was twice the size of Texas…..Now it is twice the size of the U.S.? Come on….if we can’t get together on its size how can we get together to do something about it? Factual reports need to be published. Until then how can we convince others that this exists and poses a problem other than a possible obstruction to a sailboat.
The people over at Vice did a video documentary on the plastic island. it can be viewed here;
http://www.vbs.tv/shows.php?show=1154&source=sc
it is about an hour long cut into 12 4-7 minute sections
it is a must see if you are interested in this issue.
Here is a short clip on YouTube that shows some of the effects of plastic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnUjTHB1lvM
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