Rafts of Plastic Debris
Stretching over Miles of Open Ocean
Discovered by Research Vessel Captain

PRESS RELEASE 22oct02

RESEARCH VESSEL CAPTAIN DISCOVERS DEADLY SYNTHETICS in SEA
Findings to be revealed October 27th in Santa Barbara

The oceanographic research vessel ORV Alguita returns to Santa Barbara, Thursday, October 24th, after a three month scientific research expedition covering some 7500 miles to Hawaii and through the Central Pacific Ocean. The expedition found compelling evidence that the vast Pacific Ocean is becoming a synthetic sea contaminated with “deadly” plastic particles, threatening marine life. ORV Alguita’s October 24th arrival at Sea Landing in Santa Barbara (301 W Cabrillo Blvd), coincides with the California and the World Ocean ‘02 Conference, being held October 27 – 30th at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort in Santa Barbara. Captain Moore will discuss his latest findings in an audio-visual presentation covering Plastic Debris in the Marine Environment at the Conference.

On board ORV Alguita will be the trawl samples of plastic debris taken during the voyage. The expedition discovered rafts of plastic debris stretching over miles of open ocean. Although the Algalita crew recovered several hundred pounds of debris, tons remain, forming a synthetic sea of death to marine life - and that’s the problem.

This summer, thousands of miles from port in the open ocean, ORV Alguita skipper Captain Charles Moore has been engaged in cutting edge oceanographic research. In this pelagic (open water) wilderness, the crew conducted mid-water trawls, along with surface trawls, and gathered water column samples. Researchers will compare the tiny marine animals called zooplankton with the plastic debris. Preliminary sample findings reveal that there is more than six pounds of plastic for every pound of zooplankton. The crew used scuba to collect additional samples and a camera crew filmed day and night.

Captain Moore’s cutting edge research is finding that plastics, like diamonds, are forever. Plastics are made from heavy polymer molecules that tend to float but do not biodegrade. Plastic debris escapes the land by the flushing action of storm water and ultimately enters the sea where it can drift in currents for decades. Still more pelagic plastic comes from ships at sea and lost fishing gear. The circulating plastic continually breaks into ever-smaller pieces due to photo-degradation from exposure to sunlight. Unfortunately, the smaller particles still remain polymers. Plastic particles become toxic because they have been proven to attract and absorb elements like DDT and PCB up to one million times normal ocean background levels. Plastic particles become floating poison pills that can resemble food. Marine birds and fish mistakenly eat the plastic particles thinking they are natural food, which causes disturbing things to happen. Changes may include transformations in the fish’s reproductive capability and in gender development. So plastic litter in the ocean doesn’t just look bad, it is tragic for the marine life that inhabit our ocean waters and for people who fish. Whoever thought that the plastic we use could end up compromising marine-life and come back to haunt mankind.

The ORV Alguita is the research platform of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF) of Long Beach, CA founded by Captain Moore in 1994. AMRF is dedicated to the health and preservation of the marine environment. AMRF is actively involved in innovative research, education and restoration of the marine environment. For more information visit the AMRF web site at www.algalita.org

For Immediate release 10/22/02
Contact(s):
October 23 – 24, 2002 Marieta Francis (562)-433-2361
October 25-26, 2002 Bill Macdonald (310) 401-1112

RESEARCH VESSEL CAPTAIN DISCOVERS DEADLY SYNTHETICS IN SEA

Findings to be revealed October 27th in Santa Barbara

Press event, photo and interview opportunity

Sunday, October 27, 2002 10am to Noon. Contact(s): October 23-24th Marieta Francis (AMRF office) 562-433-2361 October 25-26th Bill Macdonald (AMRF VP Media) 310-401-1112

Visit with Captain Charles Moore and crew aboard Oceanographic Research Vessel Alguita. Inspect and photograph the trawl samples of plastics collected during the three-month research expedition to the North Central Pacific Ocean. This is a special opportunity to learn more about cutting edge research vital to the overall future health of our world’s oceans.

Where: Sea Landing, Santa Barbara 301 W. Cabrillo Blvd. Santa Barbara, CA (exit 101 Freeway at Castillo St.) Turn right on W. Cabrillo Blvd. Enter at Harbor Way to Park

PRESS RELEASE 10-22-02

OCEANOGRAPHIC RESEARCH VESSEL ALGUITA COMPLETES 7,500 MILE VOYAGE ACROSS THE NORTH PACIFIC OCEAN DOCUMENTS PLASTIC POLLUTION AT UNHEARD OF LEVELS EVERYWHERE IT WENT

From July through October, ORV Alguita sampled the surface of the Pacific Ocean down to 100 feet in an attempt to quantify the tremendous load of plastic particulate pollution that plagues it. During its voyage, it visited French Frigate Shoals, northwest of Hawaii. Over 100 tons of netting, which entangle endangered monk seals and turtles have been recovered by a joint task force made up of the US Navy, Coast Guard, US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service.

On its return trip from Hawaii, ORV Alguita served as a diving platform for a field biologist who has most recently been studying the endangered Hawaiian monk seals at French Frigate Shoals, part of the Northwest Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecological Reserve. Shawn Farry, while working for the NMFS, has seen first hand the potentially lethal effects of marine pollution, often untangling monk seals and green sea turtles from lost or discarded netting and line. Aboard ORV Alguita, he served as volunteer crew and dove at many sampling sites during the return voyage from Hawaii to Santa Barbara. After viewing the plastic load in the open ocean, Shawn had this to say, “ The concept of vast quantities of plastic circulating in our oceans is not new to me, I have seen the beaches of the remote islets of French Frigate Shoals replenished daily with netting, plastic, light bulbs, shoes, fishing floats and bottles. However, I was truly shocked by the prevalence not only of large identifiable items in the gyre, but by the inescapability of particulate plastic. Anywhere we dove, everywhere we dove, there it was, even with land more than one thousand miles in any direction. Such an easy concept that I had thus far not grasped…big plastic items don’t disappear, they just breakdown until they are overlooked”.

“ ORV Alguita’s mission is to bring world attention to this problem by documenting the location, quantity and type of plastic debris found, and to photograph its interactions with marine organisms,” said Captain Charles Moore . “Our surface to 100 feet deep samples contain incredible amounts of broken down plastic remnants. Our volunteer videographers captured footage showing indiscriminate invertebrate filter feeders (zooplankton) both consuming and becoming entangled in this synthetic debris.”

Along with Captain Charles Moore, lab technician and roundtrip crew member, Trina Steele, was equally astonished by the quantity of plastic seen: “I have been working in the lab for over a year now sorting through jars of collected samples from Captain Moore’s previous transpacific studies, finding a 6 to 1 plastic to plankton ratio by weight. This was my first visit to the vast Pacific where these samples were taken. I have snorkeled and dived during this crossing at many collection sites separated by hundreds of miles and am distraught by the amount of debris seen--plastic fragments, monofilament line, Styrofoam pieces and netting materials everywhere. It’s absolutely devastating. Our Ocean’s are so vulnerable.” Cynthia Vanderlip said: “My work in the Northwestern Islands began in 1989. During the last 14 years I monitored Hawaiian monk seals, spinner dolphins, turtles and sea birds. I have seen all of these animals impacted by plastic and disentangled many of them. I’ve stood by helplessly watching seabirds feed their chicks plastic they mistook for food. I realized the impact that photographs of entangled and compromised animals had on people early in my career so I never went on a survey with out a camera. I brought these images home to scare people into doing something about the problem. With the same tenacity that I child proofed my home when my daughter was young I tried to animal proof the beaches of the Hawaiian Islands. When I was asked to come aboard the Alguita and photograph their work on plastics in the pelagic environment I jumped on the opportunity. I witnessed the scope of the problem out in the Pacific Ocean. In every dive and in every trawl we saw plastic. I believe it is urgent that we change our plastic use now or find ourselves the victims of our own undoing. By impacting the base of the food chain we will cause the collapse of our entire ecosystem.

Our youngest crewmember, Austin Brown says:

“When I was asked to come on this trip as a deckhand, I was excited. Not many people get to make a long passage like this, especially at eighteen. I was expecting to see nothing but blue water and an occasional bird, but that was far from what I actually witnessed. Growing up in Orange County and working with Orange County Coastkeepers as a scuba diver, I was used to seeing tons of trash and plastic floating in storm drains, harbors and beaches, but hundreds of miles from land in the Pacific gyre, the trash, plastic, rope, and netting started getting thicker and thicker and when we came upon a miles long windrow of it, I couldn’t believe my eyes. It made Long Beach Breakewater look clean. We went swimming with small aquarium nets and it was amazing how many BB sized bits of plastic there were as far as the eye could see in the almost unlimited underwater visibility. It’s sad what we’re doing to our ocean.”

Charles Moore, Trina Steele and Austin Brown will be available for the Press Conference on Oct. 27.

OUT IN THE PACIFIC PLASTIC IS GETTING DRASTIC

THE WORLD’S LARGEST “LANDFILL” IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE OCEAN

There is a large part of the central Pacific Ocean that no one ever visits and only a few ever pass through. Sailors avoid it like the plague for it lacks the wind they need to sail. Fisherman leave it alone because its lack of nutrients makes it an oceanic desert. This area includes the “horse latitudes,” where stock transporters in the age of sail got stuck, ran out of food and water and had to jettison their horses and other livestock.

Surprisingly, this is the largest ocean realm on our planet, being about the size of Africa- over ten million square miles. A huge mountain of air, which has been heated at the equator, and then begins descending in a gentle clockwise rotation as it approaches the North Pole, creates this ocean realm. The circular winds produce circular ocean currents which spiral into a center where there is a slight down-welling. Scientists know this atmospheric phenomenon as the subtropical high, and the ocean current it creates as the north Pacific central or sub-tropical gyre.

Because of the stability of this gentle maelstrom, the largest uniform climatic feature on earth is also an accumulator of the debris of civilization. Anything that floats, no matter where it comes from on the north Pacific Rim or ocean, ends up here, sometimes after drifting around the periphery for twelve years or more. Historically, this debris did not accumulate because it was eventually broken down by microorganisms into carbon dioxide and water. Now, however, in our battle to store goods against natural deterioration, we have created a class of products that defeats even the most creative and insidious bacteria. They are p l a s t i c s. Plastics are now virtually everywhere in our modern society. We drink out of them, eat off of them, sit on them, and even drive in them. They’re durable, lightweight, cheap, and can be made into virtually anything. But it is these useful properties of plastics, which make them so harmful when they end up in the environment. Plastics, like diamonds, are forever!

If plastic doesn’t biodegrade, what does it do? It “photo-degrades” – a process in which it is broken down by sunlight into smaller and smaller pieces, all of which are still plastic polymers, eventually becoming individual molecules of plastic, still too tough for anything to digest. For the last fifty-odd years, every piece of plastic that has made it from our shores to the Pacific Ocean, has been breaking down and accumulating in the central Pacific gyre. Oceanographers like Curtis Ebbesmeyer, the world’s leading flotsam expert, refer to it as the great Pacific Garbage Patch. The problem is that it is not a patch, it’s the size of a continent, and it’s filling up with floating plastic waste. My research has documented six pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton in this area. My latest 3-month round trip research voyage just completed in Santa Barbara this week, (our departure was covered by SBNP) got closer to the center of the Garbage Patch than before and found levels of plastic fragments that were far higher for hundreds of miles. We spent weeks documenting the effects of what amounts to floating plastic sand of all sizes on the creatures that inhabit this area. Our photographers captured images of jellyfish hopelessly entangled in frayed line, and transparent filter feeding organisms with colorful plastic fragments in their bellies.

As we drifted in the center of this system, doing underwater photography day and night, we began to realize what was happening. A paper plate thrown overboard just stayed with us, there was no wind or current to move it away. This is where all those things that wash down rivers to the sea end up. On October 10, during our return trip to Santa Barbara, we discovered something never before documented-a Langmuir Windrow of plastic debris. Circular ocean currents with contrary rotation create long lines of material, visible from above as streaks on the ocean. Normally these are formed by planktonic organisms or foam, but we discovered one made of plastic. Everything from huge hawsers to tiny fragments were formed into a miles long line. We picked up hundreds of pounds of netting of all types bailed together in this system along with every type and size of debris imaginable. Sometimes, windrows like this drift down over the Hawaiian Islands. That is when Waimanalo Beach on Oahu gets coated with blue green plastic sand, along with staggering amounts of larger debris. Farther to the northwest, at the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve, monk seals, the most endangered mammal species in the United States, get entangled in debris, especially cheap plastic nets lost or discarded by the fishing industry. Ninety percent of Hawaiian green sea turtles nest here and eat the debris, mistaking it for their natural food, as do Laysan and Black Footed Albatross. Indeed, the stomach contents of Laysan Albatross look like the cigarette lighter shelf at a convenience store they contain so many of them.

It’s not just entanglement and indigestion that are problems caused by plastic debris, however. There is a darker side to pollution of the ocean by ubiquitous plastic fragments. As these fragments float around , they accumulate the poisons we manufacture for various purposes that are not water-soluble. It turns out that plastic polymers are sponges for DDT, PCBs and nonylphenols -oily toxics that don’t dissolve in seawater. Plastic pellets have been found to accumulate up to one million times the level of these poisons that are floating in the water itself. These are not like heavy metal poisons which affect the animal that ingests them directly. Rather, they are what might be called “second generation “ toxics. Animals have evolved receptors for elaborate organic molecules called hormones, which regulate brain activity and reproduction. Hormone receptors cannot distinguish these toxics from the natural estrogenic hormone, estradiol, and when the pollutants dock at these receptors instead of the natural hormone, they have been shown to have a number of negative effects in everything from birds and fish to humans. The whole issue of hormone disruption is becoming one of, if not the biggest environmental issue of the 21st Century. Hormone disruption has been implicated in lower sperm counts and higher ratios of females to males in both humans and animals. Unchecked, this trend is a dead end for any species.

A trillion trillion vectors for our worst pollutants are being ingested by the most efficient natural vacuum cleaners nature ever invented, the mucus web feeding jellies and salps (chordate jellies that are the fastest growing multicellular organisms on the planet) out in the middle of the ocean. These organisms are in turn eaten by fish and then, certainly in many cases, by humans. We can grow pesticide free organic produce, but can nature still produce a pesticide free organic fish? After what I have witnessed first hand in the Pacific, I have my doubts.

I am often asked why we can’t vacuum up the particles. In fact, it would be more difficult than vacuuming up every square inch of the entire United States, it’s larger and the fragments are mixed below the surface down to at least 30 meters. Also, untold numbers of organisms would be destroyed in the process. Besides, there is no economic resource that would be directly benefited by this process. We have not yet learned how to factor the health of the environment into our economic paradigm. We need to get to work on this calculus quickly, for a stock market crash will pale by comparison to an ecological crash on an oceanic scale.

I know that when people think of the deep blue ocean, they see images of pure, clean, unpolluted water. After we sample the surface water in the central Pacific, I often dive over with a snorkel and a small aquarium net. I have yet to come back after a fifteen minute swim without plastic fragments for my collection. I can no longer see pristine images when I think of the briny deep. Neither can I imagine any “beach cleanup” type of solution. Only elimination of the source of the problem can result in an ocean nearly free from plastic, and the desired result will only be seen by citizens of the third millennium AD. The battle to change the way we produce and consume plastics has just begun, but I believe it is essential that it be fought now. The levels of plastic particulates in the Pacific have at least tripled in the last ten years and a tenfold increase in the next decade is not unreasonable. Then, sixty times more plastic than plankton will float on its surface.

Captain Charles Moore Aboard Oceanographic Research Vessel, Alguita Alguita.com, Algalita.org,