Q
. When and how did you first come across the topic of plastic in the sea, how did you get the idea to write your master’s thesis about this topic?
A
. I started reading “Plastic Ocean” by Susan Casey and I sincerely lost sleep over it. I read it three times! In the article, she described a snapping turtle that got a plastic milk jug ring stuck around its body mid-shell and it grew around it making its shell the shape of a figure eight. I woke up one night with this image in my head and had to see if I could find a picture of it online.
And sure enough I did. Her name is May West. She is 9 years old and lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
A week later I found the Algalita Marine Research Foundation online and filled out their volunteer application. Working with chemists in the University of North Carolina Wilmington, we offered to start an East Coast/West Coast collaboration with Algalita. It was then that I decided to make this the topic for my master’s thesis. Currently, we are looking at the plastic samples from both the North Atlantic and the North Pacific gyres and attempting to type the plastics. I continue researching marine animals that suffer from entanglement or plastic ingestion and found hundreds of sites and reports dealing with these issues.
Q
. Before travelling to the North Atlantic and the Pacific garbage patch did you have preconceived ideas of what they would be like, and can you describe what you saw?
A
. I know that when I first read about the North Pacific Garbage Patch, I visualized a smooth ocean like glass and plastic floating on the surface like ducks on a pond. I envisioned we could look out over the ocean and see this plastic debris stretched across the surface for miles. Some people even have told me they have heard it’s like a real island twice the size of Texas. Sadly, it is not like that because if it were, we could take pictures of it and send them to every form of mass media there is. But like an iceberg, the bulk of it is mostly below the surface with only a small part of it breaking the surface. For example we found a couple of 55 gallon drums. These plastic drums are about 4’ tall and nearly 3’wide. When we saw them in the ocean only a few inches broke the surface making them visible. The visible items were things like bottles with caps still on them, and lots of Styrofoam, many ghost nets, and even toilet seats. So it didn’t look like anything I imagined. Not being able to see it until you’re on top of it is hard because it impedes any clean up initiative, but furthermore, many items out there are navigational hazards.
So the combination of wave action, sun reflection, and only a small portion of the debris breaking the surface, it is difficult to see let alone photograph or video. One person would be driving the boat and the rest of us would be out on the bow shouting out sightings and it always amazed me how much there was.
Q
. Would you know of any promising ideas, how this plastic problem could be solved or at least diminished?
A
. I like to compare the problem to an overflowing bathtub that has the faucets running. What would you do first? Would you clean up the water on the floor or would you shut the faucets first then clean up the mess? That is what we are faced with. Sure we can go out and get it. But the fact of the matter, it keeps going out there because we haven’t figure out a way to educate people on proper disposal or that there is value to much of our plastic. The other thing is to do ocean cleanups closer to shore. For example, the Sargassum in the Atlantic often times forms in windrows. A lot of plastic is found in these windrows. There are websites that can show fisherman where these windrows are (because it’s a great place to fish as well.) Boats
could go out and clean up these windrows that have a lot of plastic debris in them. Sargassum has
its own ecosystem where sea life live and feed so removing plastic may help prevent ingestion and entanglement.