The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I don’t like being negative, but I recently read an article that a soup of plastic debris floats off the coast of California, a testament to humanity’s reliance on plastic and the failure to dispose of it properly, which is why we Ocean lovers must be diligent and set the ecology example.

I first heard of this plastic-rich portion of the ocean way back in the 1970’s. It is a product of swirling currents, known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, that gather and concentrate debris. Like an iceberg of debris floating in the Pacific Ocean, the mass usually isn’t visible on the surface, but lurks just below. You can’t walk on it.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become an early symbol of what some say is a looming trash crisis. But this floating mass of is hard to measure, few agree on how big it is or how much plastic it holds. That makes it difficult to determine what to do about it.

That hasn’t stopped activists and the media from using only the biggest estimates of the patch’s size to warn of an environmental catastrophe, which really captures the publics imagination, but to characterize it inaccurately is wrong and prone to exaggeration and mis-characterization. One thing is for sure; it is human trash and so it can be controlled.

It is difficult to know how to extrapolate the findings. The borders of the gyre shift between seasons, and some scientists argue that the high-plastic area is concentrated and confined to a relatively small part of the gyre.  So what let’s fix it, RIGHT?

Even as the debate over the plastic patch’s size continues, some estimates have been reported with scientific certainty. For instance the ratio of plastic to zooplankton by mass was six to one. A more-recent visit turned up an increase in this ratio, to 46 to one, according to that study’s Web site. But that is an average of the ratio at each testing site, which included some very high ratios, probably anomalies. A more comparable figure is eight to one, representing a more modest increase when results are aggregated across all testing sites. While the heaviest bits of plastic inflate the measure of the debris patch, those pieces pose less of an environmental threat, because they are too large for marine creatures to mistake for food.

Much of the misinformation comes from environmental groups exaggerating the research.

Environmental advocate David Suzuki has written of a “massive, expanding island of plastic debris 30 meters [98 feet] deep and bigger than the province of Quebec.” Asked whether the high-plastic region could really be called an island, Bill Wareham, senior marine conservation specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation, says, “It’s not going to look like island in the context of, ‘Gee, I can walk across that.’ But it is a very high density of plastic.” He adds, “David speaks in a way where he’s framing the issue in a way people can understand it.”

Other advocates object to such terminology. “The problem with superlative statements that this is somehow a huge floating mass of plastic is that they inevitably lead to desensitizing people when they learn the truth of it,” says David Santillo, a senior scientist with Greenpeace.

Even if scientists and advocates could agree on numbers for the size and plastic concentration of the gyre, it is unclear what they would do with the information. Plastics can harm ocean birds and mammals because they carry toxins, can pierce internal organs and kill. But hard numbers are tough to come by. It’s hard to say a fish or bird died due to plastic in its stomach, but it happens.

No one thinks any possible benefits of plastic outweigh risks, however Prof. Karl did find some positive aspects of the patch — a high concentration of microorganisms clinging to the debris. “The microorganisms are good for the ocean, because it turns out they’re making oxygen,” Prof. Karl says. “If plastics were otherwise neutral to the environment, then they’d be helping by harvesting more solar energy.” Dr. Bamford says it is possible that a cleanup, even if it were feasible, would do more harm than good, by removing these organisms.

Certainly we should challenge the effectiveness of our land-based efforts to choke the flow of plastic to ocean waters. Unfortunately nobody owns the problem.

Tags: dive, green, Green Stuff, Ocean Fun Facts, Pacific Ocean, RANT