Plastic pollution in our oceans kills seabirds, fish, and…humans?

Patch Work

The massive, deep currents of the oceans create five gigantic permanent whirlpools. Two in the north and south Atlantic, two in the north and south Pacific, and one in the Indian Ocean.

You may never come within a thousand miles of any of these gigantic gyres. But they could already be affecting your health in the most disturbing way.

Actually, the gyres aren’t the problem. Plastic is the problem.

Minimal use…maximum problem

For centuries, sailors have avoided the North Pacific Gyre, an area of about 10 million square miles. Sailors call it the “doldrums” because an immense high-pressure system combines with powerful currents to make travel slow going.

Captain Charles Moore, an ocean researcher, has a more colorful term for the gyre. He calls it “a toilet that won’t flush.”

About 12 years ago, Moore sailed straight through the gyre and found something appalling. As he neared the center he came across more and more plastic objects bobbing on the ocean’s surface, all slowly drawn to the center of the whirlpool.

Even more disturbing was what he saw just below the water’s surface: a ceaseless flow of small bits of plastic.

Moore dubbed this vast “microplastic” debris field the Pacific Garbage Patch. Scientists estimate that it’s roughly the size of Texas, Minnesota, Connecticut, Maryland, and California, combined.

That’s staggering. But even more disturbing: This patch is constantly growing — as are similar patches in the other four gyres.

Every year, the world produces about 100 million tons of “minimal use” plastic, such as soda bottles, ink pens, and Styrofoam cups. One use and they’re discarded. Many of those items end up in streams and rivers, and are eventually washed out to sea. Over time, ocean waves, storms, and sunlight break the plastic down into confetti- sized, microplastic bits.

And into the five swirling gyres they go.

Climbing the food chain

If these garbage patches were only unsightly, that would be bad enough. But birds and marine animals eat the plastic bits, mistaking them for food. According to a Surfrider Foundation report, microplastic ingestion is responsible for the deaths of more than a million seabirds yearly, as well as thousands of fish and marine mammals.

And this is where it becomes not only a moral and environmental nightmare, but it begins to affect our health.

Toxins from decomposing plastic are ingested at the lowest level of the marine food chain. From there, these poisons work their way up to larger fish, which are eaten by humans. The long-range effects are unknown, but little by little it adds to our toxic load.

In the years since the Pacific Garbage Patch was discovered, environmental scientists have been studying the problem, trying to figure out how to clean these unflushable toilets. It’s daunting. We’ve been pumping plastics into the oceans for decades. You have to wonder if we’re up to the task of reversing all those years of pollution.

I recently read about a microchip that can be attached to a leaf on a field crop. The chip senses when the plant needs watering and sends a text message to the farmer’s cell phone. “Hey! Water me!” If we can make plants send text messages, you would think we’d be able to clean up the garbage patches in our oceans before they do us all in.

You can find more information about efforts to reverse ocean microplastic pollution at junkraft.com.

Sources:
“Plastic Purgatory…A Profile on Ocean Pollution” Chrissy Bailey, Surfrider Foundation, surfrider.com
“An Ocean of Plastic” Kitt Doucette, Rolling Stone, 10/29/09
“Sailing to Hawaii on 15,000 Plastic Bottles and a Cessna 310, to Raise Awareness About Plastic Fouling Our Oceans” Junkraft, junkraft.com