Junk journey highlights 'plastic soup' of Pacific Ocean
The junk is made, literally, from junk: 15,000 plastic bottles, a Cessna cockpit, and a used sail.
(Credit: Peter Bennett/Ambient Images Inc.)Sailing 4,000 miles on the Pacific Ocean made Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal sick. It wasn't waves that turned their stomachs, but the amount of plastic garbage they encountered on a voyage with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation earlier this year.
The activists wanted more people to share their disgust about plastic litter that swirls, relatively unexplored, in continent-size patches of ocean.
To that end, they have built a motor-less craft from 15,000 recycled beverage bottles, fishing nets, and the cockpit of a Cessna, and are sailing it more than 2,000 miles from southern California to Hawaii. They left Long Beach, Calif., on Sunday.
The sailors plan to collect samples from plastic-polluted ocean water, but this mission's main aim is to attract attention.
(Credit: Algalita Marine Research Foundation)The 1.5-ton junk features a solar panel and wind turbine to power GPS and other devices. It's made of six pontoons each 30 feet long, filled with 2,000 soda and sports drink bottles, and triple-wrapped in used fishing nets. Twenty sailboat masts provide a frame, secured to a cabin cut from a Cessna 310 fuselage.
On the last Pacific voyage that ended in February, Eriksen and Paschal helped marine researcher Charles Moore assess the extent of pollution in the waters leading up to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling mass of plastic debris some estimate to be as large as the United States.
In early tests, a sample showed 48 parts of plastic to each part of plankton.
"They haven't finished processing the samples, but there was an exponential increase in the plastic," said Anna Cummins, who was also aboard and serves as Algalita's education adviser. "What looked on the surface like clean water, when you pulled it up, it looked like plastic soup. It was disgusting."
Algalita researchers said the floating, soupy landfill isn't well understood because satellites can't spot the translucent particles. And although efforts by scientists to explore plastic in five gyres around the world have been lacking, interest is expanding as the public learns more.
"No one really knows what's out in the other gyres," Cummins said. "In the north Pacific alone there's Capt. Moore with his research boat. We are a small organization with five or six paid staff members."
Eighty percent of the plastic comes not from ships but from land, where tossed consumer goods eventually travel from beaches and rivers into the ocean, according to Algalita.
Plastic concentrates poisons such as PCBs at levels a million times higher than found in the water, according to Japanese researchers.
The amount of plastic produced in the United States has nearly doubled in the past two decades, according to the American Chemistry Council.
"Recycling isn't the solution," Cummins said. "We think there absolutely needs to be a reduction in the overall use and consumption of plastic."
Cummins said she backs the attention-getting adventure but feels nervous about the safety of Paschal and Eriksen, her fiance.
For more than a decade Algalita researchers have been collecting samples from the North Pacific Gyre, which traps untold amounts of plastic particles in its eddies.
(Credit: Algalita Marine Research Foundation)"Yes, we are risking our lives, but the issue of petroleum-based plastic and our national dependence on petroleum, warrant urgent action," noted Eriksen on a blog that will chronicle the journey.
However, he added, the sailboat masts and aluminum airplane fuselage are easy for radar to detect. "We have a better chance of being seen by big ships than typical fiberglass sailboats do."
Two satellite telephones keep the sailors in touch with the rest of the world. They also have several GPS units, VHF radios, and a Coast Guard beacon. Three months' worth of food includes a bucket of Hershey's Kisses.
It's not the first junk journey for Eriksen, who holds a doctorate in science education. After serving as a Marine in the Gulf War, he traveled the Mississippi River in a handmade raft of plastic bottles, then wrote a book about the trip.
The current odyssey is costing between $40,000 to $50,000, with big support from donations, Cummins said. Most of the bottles were given by a Burbank, Calif., recycling center. Patagonia gave the crew 500 Nalgene bottles being phased out due to concerns about bisphenol-A leaching from them.
The crew, towed first to San Nicolas Island before setting sail, encountered gale force winds Tuesday night. They plan to arrive in Hawaii in about six weeks.
The junk, floating on bottles meant to support 6 tons of weight, left Long Beach on Sunday.
(Credit: Peter Bennett/Ambient Images Inc.)
http://www.vbs.tv/video.php?id=1485308505
The magazine article can also be found here: http://www.viceland.com/int/v15n2/htdocs/oh_this_is_great.php
It was perhaps 20 years ago when watching a PBS documentary by Jacques Cousteau. In a boat he fingered a tar-ball of oil and said: "The oceans are polluted" Clear, concise, scientific. The largest challenge: SOS - Save our seas - not through rhetoric, but by the kind of proven, political action that has a lasting benefit (sorry, it's not protests, demonstrations & marches) but writing to your political leaders.
Surely anyone living in a country with a seaport can find a ministry, an agency, even a government official to write to. Be polite, keep the summary of why you write short and to the point then ask what they can do to help. ASK WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP. And continue writing and using a telephone if possible, but letters leave the person with a challenge - it's difficult to throw away that piece of paper asking for a reasonable response / help. It is easier to ignore a phone call and delete an email.
In America it would be congressmen, senators, where I live - a coastal American state, Washington, even writing to local government like the governor and to organizations that should protect the ocean like (again in my country of USA) National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Remember, the oceans of our planet give us so much that we cannot live without them. Is this to be our final destiny, extinction at our own hands?
Steve Shepard - Seattle, Washington State, USA
The North Pacific Gyre functions a lot like the Internet!
http://groups.google.com/group/plastic-soup-clean-up
VERY IMPORTANT
Sign My Petition to show your support
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/ocean-clean-up-project
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by Donnaleez
May 12, 2009 9:11 AM PDT
- I've seen several sites that claim the existence of these plastic swirls is blow way out of proportions. But I say, "So what!" Isn't the reality of this that the plastic swirl is just one of the horrifice things humans have done to the earth? We're melting the poles, hunting the wild life into extension, burning the rain forests, fishing the oceans and lakes dry, Bla-bla and bla?the list is endless! Now, to make matters worse the last time I watched the news the political parties in the country I live in (USA) couldn?t even stand being in the same room together long enough to decide who was will to sit next to who much less address getting together to discuss cleaning up the earth. Perhaps it?s time to consider the ?Disney Factor? ,that's what I call it. In my opinion we can believe one of two stories out there. #1: Mankind across the planet suddenly says something like, ?O! We now collectively understand, so from here out all nations will work together to stop destroying the planet ?of course, we?ll be doing away with all obstacles that could hamper our plans such as war, insurrections and world hunger.? Now #2: The people that come to your door and say, ?Tell me what you think this means? ,?God will bring to ruin those ruining the earth? (Wrote that one down, last book of the bible-11:18). So now here?s my question. Why is Disney #2 sounding more logical to me in the long run these day?
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