The Plastic Ocean Project

Solutions

2011-10-15T17:38:00.000-07:00

This image gives a whole new meaning to Green Stamps. When I was a kid, our parents would be given paper green stamps, when buying groceries, that would allow them to get free stuff when they collect a gazillion. They had to buy food anyway and when they filled about 6 books of stamps they could get some pretty cool free stuff. Today these green stamps offer another savings and perhaps more important FREE stuff, like using less gives us more down the road. I got these stamps from my friend Kurt Lieber who is a musician and an ocean activist. Check out his website http://www.oceandefenders.org/.

I've been blogging for three years now and today, finally, I had the chance to add another feature page to my blog. It's called Solutions. Each week I'm going to add another idea from the book Do one Green Thing - written by Mindy Pennybacker. Change happens when each of us make simple adjustments in what we do whether it's TV shows we watch, things that we buy, food and beverages that we consume, or actions such as recycling or deciding not to throw trash on the ground (including cigarette butts).

Change happens when we make the old way of doing thing obsolete. By bringing bags to the grocery store makes plastic bags obsolete. Getting involved in groups that are trying to create change is another way to not only facilitate change, but connect with people that share the same values. Surfrider, for example, is all about making change while having a good time. So be a part of the solution. Change a simple habit, join a local chapter of Surfrider or an organization that doesn't have a profit gain as the focal point. Be a part of something that matters - Change will do ya good.

Bored? Creative Ways to Spend Your Day and Money

2011-10-02T12:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I attended an event that I would not have known about if it were not for Danielle Richardet, and Sean Ahlum, Surfrider. My job at the event called, Life Rolls On, (put on by a consortium of Surfrider, Odysea, and Ocean Cure) was to create a sand sculpture using plastics lift on Wrightsville Beach and kindly picked up by Ginger and John Taylor. Danielle thought it be a good idea to make it into a foot print as in "What's your plastic footprint?"

When I got to the beach, I found a carpet of wooden panels that led to the shore line with a parade of enthusiastic, physically challenged, surfers being wheeled to the beach. Several of them had very little use of any of their limbs. Ginger, Danielle, and I, along with Danielle's three munchkins, quickly constructed the sculpture and then one by one we took turns going to the shore line. Tears rolled down cheeks as cheers of joy filled the air while the surfers guided the newfound surfers into the waves and gently rode them into shore. Smiles everywhere.

I thought to myself, how many of us go shopping when we're bored. We go to see something new, to find something that makes us feel good about ourselves. We go meandering aimlessly looking at THINGS that we can buy to look at that may or may not have meaning. Imagine if instead we looked in the newspaper to see what local groups are doing. Maybe we could find that something of meaning at local schools or fundraisers for cancer victims. Maybe we would be so moved by others efforts that we would buy a tee shirt from that event knowing that the money we gave would go toward something bigger than ourselves. And maybe when we put that tee shirt on, it would take us back to a time and place that held so much more meaning than a shirt that advertises for big businesses like Abercrombie and Fitch, Nike, or Burberry.

Yesterdays tee shirts were $10, not much to pay for something that makes a difference for the things that matter instead funding big business.

Tree Growing Plastic Fruit?

2011-07-30T07:55:00.000-07:00

The last time I was in Hawaii, I was told to go to the windward side of the island, there I would find the plastic debris floating in like seaweed. I knew I found my destination when I saw the Plastic Fruit Tree. Someone went to great pains to create this work of plastic art. I studied it from every angle then began looking further down the coastline. Sure enough, as I walked, I watched the plastic roll in like dead seaweed.

This past week in the C&EN Magazine - Chemical and Engineering News published by the American Chemical Society, had an article titled, "Perserving Plastic Art." Ironically, plastics designed to be "everlasting," do not keep well in museums. Apparently, the best place to "get rid of plastic" is in art museums. "Oxygen, light, and water in the air" cause the plastics to breakdown. and while doing so, "Sometimes the breakdown molecules float over to nearby artifacts, inciting corrosion, staining, or degradation." If plastic is doing this in museums, what is it doing sitting in our food closets? Where are the chemicals leaching, into our food, into us? Could the chemical "corrosion" be another factor to why "1 of 2 men; 1 of 3 women will develop some type of cancer in their lifetime," according to American Cancer Society. The more I learn about plastic, the more I am convinced that our food should NOT be touching it or even near it.

After learning this, it also made me think of how we typically dispose of plastic. Most of it we bury in landfills where it has none of the necessary elements for it to breakdown. (Of course breaking down does NOT mean going away). And then there is a large portion of it in our oceans where clearly there is plenty of O2, water, and light to break it down. The ocean, were this very processes is wreaking havoc on our marine life.

This only confirms my push to not use plastic. If we must use it, then recycle or burn it for energy. We should refrain from DRINKing and EATing things in plastic. Buy local foods at farmers markets and Co-Ops. Buy in bulk food sections. Lots of times you can bring your own glass, steel, or ceramic containers to fill, and you will eat better. I know how difficult it is to not buy food in plastic but by taking this one step you won't need to be on a diet. Furthermore, reducing your use of plastics will most definitely reduce the chemical load on your body because most foods packaged in plastic contain ingredients you cannot even read. And what you don't know can hurt you.

Solutions to Plastic Pollution

2011-06-04T05:42:00.000-07:00

Trash that would be buried and useless

Plastic, paper, and cans recycled instead of landfilled

Trash that is burned to create steam energy

Kathy Russell from TFC Recycling is one of the many people trying to make good on one time use plastic, paper, cans, and cardboard. Her work is on the other end of the spectrum from Algalita's, 5Gyres, Jennifer O'Keefe, Danielle Richardet and what I’ve been doing over the past few years. While we have been researching the breadth of plastic pollution and educating people on the problems with one-time use plastics, the people of TFC Recycling have been taking on this issue from another angle. They’re giving trash value and I’m a firm believer once we give trash value, we’ll make sure it goes where it belongs, like putting money in a bank. We don’t just throw money on the ground – that would be silly. So is it to throw trash on the ground.

The materials collected from "trash" generate dollars for this business. These items end up going back into more products instead of sitting on the floor of a landfill while we cut down more trees, drill for more oil and gas, and extract aluminum from the earth. Of course the companies that do that work don’t like recycling. These businesses lose out even though their some of the richest companies in the world. How do we fight big business? Use less plastic and one time use items and recycle the ones you do.

Because of Kathy’s connections we, the Richardet family and me, were also able to visit the Hampton/NASA Steam Plant. Here they take garbage and burn it to create steam for our government lab research. The emissions are of critical concern and of course one of my most pressing questions. According to our tour guide, the plant surpasses government standards of emissions meaning they burn cleaner than legal requirements while reducing the demand for petroleum, coal, and natural gas. And other than trucking it around (we have to with petroleum, coal, and gas anyway) it is free energy. Makes more sense than drilling miles off shore and a mile deep into the ocean floor. Not that there aren't risks but it is much easier to put a fire out on land than it is to contain millions of barrels of oil sprawled 1000s of miles across the ocean or getting chemicals out of drinking water from fracking for natural gas. Think about it.

Dr.'s Orders - No Plastic Toys, Balls, Bowls

2011-05-15T18:27:00.000-07:00

My dear friend Butch, an electrician, was working at a friend's house when he noticed this very tender rash on this dog's mouth. When he asked what it was, the owner explained that these sores around the dog's mouth are a mystery. The vet has been treating this condition for some time and came to the conclusion that it is a reaction to plastic. "No more plastic toys, bowls, or balls for this dog." The vet is convinced it has to do with something in the plastic.

I gave a talk at the Wilmington Audubon Society meeting in January and described research that has been connecting some health problems to plastic additives such as BPA and phthalates. Afterward an older man walked up to me and thanked me. He said, "I had a cat that loved to lick plastic bags. It died of jaw cancer. I never made the connection."

We need to make these connections. According to laboratory tests commissioned by Environmental Working Group, 9 out of 10 Babies' Umbilical Cords Tested Positive with BPA. Studies I've read done by the chemical companies report that BPA is flushed out of the body within two hours of ingestion and doesn't bio accumulate. So how do they account for finding it in the lifeline to unborn children?

BPA is not found in glass so to avoid one of the ways of getting BPA in our bodies, try not to eat or drink out of plastic containers.

Where is the Human Interest?

2011-04-27T12:39:00.000-07:00

Roz Savage is having a time. She rowed the first 350 nm across the Indian Ocean when her single-woman rowboat was "a-salted." She wasn't stranded, or in need of rescue, rather she was playing it smart by doubling back in order to fix her leaky hatch that allowed salt water to drip down on her desalinater that caused it to break. Salt water is benign in most cases except when you have to sit in it for long periods of time (I experienced that in the South Atlantic-ouch), or if it gets into electrical/metal equipment. As she was being towed in (taking a free ride - who wouldn't) the press was hovering like turkey vultures over fresh roadkill. She wrote,"Why do they focus on the “human interest” stories when the really big news is, I suppose, the ultimate “human interest” story – what should we be doing in the best interests of the entire human race?" Roz posted this in her blog frustrated because the real story is our ocean in crisis. Between over fishing, acidification, plastic pollution, oil spills, chemical pollutants, and cover-ups, it is in sad state of affairs. Roz has taken matters into her own hands, literally, by rowing around the world to bring awareness to the problems facing our world's ocean.

Roz is among some of my favorite ocean warriors like Charlie Moore - Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Kurt Lieber - Ocean Defenders Alliance, Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummings - 5Gyres. I've had the privilege of working along side these groups. But most recently, I have been given the opportunity to talk about my work with Algalita and 5Gyres Saturday April 30th at a reception with Chris Aguilar, a lifelong surfer, fundraiser, and filmmaker. Chris is involved in a film project illustrating Jenny Kalmbach and Morgan Hoesterey, paddle boarders, and activists who paddled the Hawaiian Islands raising awareness to plastic pollution and money for Algalita Marine Research Foundation. He is also raising money for victims of the Japan tsunami and is touring with his movie project.

More later,

Bonnie Over the Ocen

It's Been A While . . .

2011-04-24T07:50:00.000-07:00

Since my last post, I have been in Hawaii for the International Marine Debris Conference, returned to Kamilo Beach (one of the dirtiest uninhabited beaches in the world), defended The Plastic Ocean Project for my Masters, and connected with old friends as well as met some new ones. So where do I start?

Because one of the highlights over the past few weeks was meeting Roz Savage, I'll start with her. Roz has already rowed a one-woman row boat across two oceans and is on her third at this very moment. She is rowing across the Indian Ocean. One of the most dangerous oceans due to pirating. I admire her for her efforts in bringing attention to the global issue of plastic marine pollution by taking on such feats. Not only that, she has written a book about her experiences and it came in handy when dealing with a rash from sea water I experienced while out in the South Atlantic. I'm keeping an eye on Roz as she blogs from sea!

Jean-Michel Cousteau is yet another ocean celeb I got to meet. What wonderful stories he had to share about his father Jacques. Since Jean-Michel has been on and in the ocean since he was a small child and in many different parts of the world, he has witnessed the SEA change/destruction. He shared with us in a personal interview how fish are being replaced with plastic. I paraphrase - These days, chances are better seeing plastic than seeing marine life.

While at Kamilo Beach with Ron and Noni Sanford, I stood on the shoreline watching the plastic roll in. Fragmented plastics that are much more difficult to pick up than the large items they once were. Another good reason not to let plastic get into the ocean. Imagine swimming in floating toothbrush parts!

I also got to see some of my favorite people while in Hawaii, besides Ron and Noni Sanford, like Chelsea Rochman, and Jo Ruxton. Jo is the producer of a full -length documentary on the problems and solutions of plastic pollution.

Returning from Hawaii, I slept an average of 4 hours a night finishing up my GLS Final Project paper as well as putting my defense together. I defended on my birthday April 15 since The Plastic Ocean Project started on that very day three years ago when I gave a thank you speech in front of 250 people.

Danielle Richardet and Gabrielle Steele

The largest audience I presented in front of was on my birthday a year ago at Terre Theatre. Amazingly enough, my defense had a record number of people show up for a GLS defense. The reason? Not because I'm a wonderful speaker, it's because of the topic. Just as I became curious about plastics accumulating 100s of miles away from land, it affects others the same way. I attribute it to the fact that we live on an "Ocean Planet" and we are "Ocean Beings." Seventy percent of the earth is covered with water and about the same percentage of oxygen comes from the sea. We are born out of ocean-like water. We cry ocean tears, even our blood shares the same elements. I'm glad to be done with the degree, but I will never be done trying to get people to change their plastic use. And that includes me.

Shirley Holden and me

Yesterday, I joined Danielle Richardet, her family, and Gabrielle Steele from the American Lung Association, to do a 20 minute beach clean-up at Wrightsville Beach. I brought my 83-year-old mother and she helped. She's a testiment that we can all help whether we are the ones who create litter or not.

More later.

Bonnie Over the Ocean

Turtle Tasting Plastic

2011-03-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

I've been meeting some very impressive people while here in Hawaii including a hawksbill sea turtle who was so curious about my plastic underwater housing he tried to taste it. Here is the actual footage.

I'm on the run to the next event.

More later on the fantastic people here at the International Marine Debris Conference, revisiting Kamilo Beach, and much, much more.

Bonnie

Texas Teens Take on Plastic Marine Pollution

2011-03-15T16:29:00.000-07:00

Coyle Middle School's science teacher Jim Manley was selected to be a team member for lead scientist Maureen Conte, the Ocean Flux Program. He earned this experience via the TXESS Revolution through the University of Texas at Austin. What he didn't foresee was meeting the Plastic Ocean Crew while learning about the Ocean Flux Program off the coast of Bermuda. Together the two teams of researchers steamed around the North Atlantic for five days last summer. What Mr. Manley learned from his experience he took back to the classroom.

The Ocean Flux Program studies sediments on the ocean floor and is the longest open-ocean sediment research - roughly 40 years. Plastic pollution in the marine environment has over 450 scientific peered reviewed papers published and started about the same time. Our findings last summer revealed plastic fragments in every sample. Witnessing this first hand, (literally countless hours of handpicking plastic from sargassum) motivated Mr. Manley to educate his 7th grade students on this issue. As a group project, Mr Manley encouraged each of his seven science classes to research the problems with plastic in the marine environement.

I had the privilege to Skype to each class telling them about my research and then answer their excellent questions. Here are the results of their research and their unique way of communicating their findings.

1st period
Group1- Rylie Wreyford, Ashton Simons,and Summer Alonzo do a great job at answering questions related to plastic pollution AND their website will JUMP out at you.
http://marinepollution4science.webs.com/

2nd period
Group 1-Jessica Davis ,Ashlie Byland, Diana Torres, Kangwa Chisanga. This link gets my "seal" of approval! (I mean sea lion)
http://plasticproblem.yolasite.com/

Group 2- Michael Guerrero, Lance Key, Alyssa Buller, Allison Hood.We hope our website is able to provide plenty of information to all who would like to learn and study the plastic ocean thank you for everything- Michael Guerrero!

www.Wix.com
The email is cowboysfreak97@yahoo.com the password is 4617@m

Group 3- vance,blake,malik,ka’juan,angel. This website makes a huge splash! Great design.
http://plastickillstheocean.webs.com/

4th period
1st group
AUBRIE MCINTOSH ,NICOLE JONES,MELISSA HARE,MIA JOHNSON Simply stated "Pick up that plastic!" It really is that simple! Great use of color!
http://pnk20110304125441-7706777.webstarts.com/index.html

5th period
1st group These students put some time into this one - "Teens of today's generation are the ones who make a difference in today's world." And you, Kayla Trzupek, Renee Kermes, Morgan Cater, and Gabby Maldonado are doing just that!. Check it out!
www.plasticoceanawareness.webs.com

2nd group
"Its very important for our generation to turn this around and fix it!" Great line students! Go to http://marineecos101.webs.com/ to learn more. Way to go Courtney Pryor, Lindsey Pikulinski, Cody Richards, Hunter Rollins
4th Group
Umul Lalee, Auqustina Omenihu, Abigail, Catera Farlough - this is probably the coolest website I've ever seen- you guys rock! Sound and cool transitions are sweet. www.wix.com/brunettes_beauty/savingmarinelife

5th Group
Facebook Page Name (The Plastic Oceans) These students came up with the idea of Questions and Answers as a way to educate. Brilliant! http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Plastic-Ocean-Project/183747538335706?sk=wall&filter=2#!/pages/The-Plastic-Oceans/193144610719078
By Logan Bonner, Paige Carrera, Rene Cristales, Leah Nguyen, Aundre Glenn

7th period
Team1
Rachel Conachen,Melanie velazquez, sarah honza, Abigail Osborn - Factual and full of info - awesome way to educate people on the problems with plastic (I have a special place in my heart for the name too!)
Facebook : The Plastic Ocean Project http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Plastic-Ocean-Project/183747538335706?sk=wall&filter=2

Team 2
www.wix.com/itich3/plastic-polluters
Though there is some creative spelling, the message is not lost in translation. You'll get some insight into the problems with plastic with this link.
by : Leelise Hiticha, Mariah Alaniz, Victoria Patterson, Alden Gartrell

Team 3
Go to this site and VOTE if you think plastic is a problem in the ocean!
Go to- http://www.deathbyplastic.weebly.com/
Team members: Caleb Darnell, Bailey Aleo, Ronny Herrera, Jack Conely, Luke Pearson

Team 4
http://theplasticproject.webs.com/ Learn how the abiota and biota are affected by plastic.
Team members: Will Plunk, Ryan Tayara, Danny Clegg, Blake Allen

Team 5
"Helping get rid of the plastic is VERY easy. All you have to do is once a day pick up ONE piece of trash ANYWHERE" to read more good quotes like this one go to:
http://teamnarwhal.weebly.com/
Team Narwhal Members: Lauren Morrow, Kiara Bess, Savannah Shults, Allison Judd

Team 6
"The ocean covers 72% (and rising) of this small planet and is home to most of the globe's biomass, or living matter, and biodiversity" and this is reason enough to protect our oceans - good stuff Team 6!
http://cleanoceans.weebly.com/
Team Members- Rebeca Volosen , Delyla Halil ,Thuy Nguyen, Denxel Briones, Alante Montgomery

Team 7
Last but not least - the quotes on this website say so much about human impacts on many levels. But my favorite is "If each of us did just one thing to help the environment, we could change the world.” Jean Beasley—Sea Turtle Hospital
http://theperilsofpollution.webs.com/
Team Members: Jocelyn Sanchez, Hayle Mackey, Amanda Lo, Tori Goodwin

Of all the posts I've ever done, this one is filled with hope of the future for our planet. Thank you Jim Manley and all your students who contributed to this page.

Best,

Bonnie

Why Plastic in the Ocean Sucks for Marine Life

2011-02-28T14:25:00.000-08:00

A little over a year ago, I reported on my witnessing a sea lion who was nearing decapitation from one strand of fishing line. It took her 6 months to heal and will forever be scarred. She was released in March '09 and I found this picture on SeaWeb Photobank and I'm confident its her in the wild judging by the huge scar around her neck and large scar patch above her left flipper. She's a success story. See how thin she was in a video from a previous post. http://theplasticocean.blogspot.com/2009/11/more-on-segway-sea-lion-fishing-line.html

James Dean in recovery from eye wound

Check out her and James Dean's, her boyfriend, in the linked below. James Dean was another victim to fishing line only he lost one of his eyes. See how thin they got and how well they regrained their size thanks to the awesome team at the Pacific Marine Mammal Program in Southern California. Check out the link below of their release. They will move you.

James Dean, Segway, and friend being released back to the sea.

Here is another story of a rescue and how litter has become a death trap for many marine animals.

Seal pup saved after horror injury as litter fears worsen

Feb 27 2011 Exclusive by Mike Merritt, Sunday Mail

AN injured seal has had a miracle recovery as experts warn they are under threat because of a rising tide of litter off the Scottish coast. Specialist vets say they are shocked at the increasing number of life-threatening injuries caused by balloons, discarded fishing gear and plastic bags.

In the latest incident an eight-week-old seal pup narrowly escaped death after his neck became tangled in a discarded fishing line. The pup - nicknamed Ringo by staff at the Highland Seal Hospital in John O'Groats- suffered the injury as he ventured inshore looking for fish.

Hospital manager Jamie Dyer said: "Marine litter and discarded fishing tackle is a real problem. Balloons are also now a big issue as well - we've found a lot in seals' stomachs."Discarded plastic bags are a growing problem - turtles eat them thinking they are squid or jellyfish.

"We save about 30 seals a year and some have terrible injuries. Ringo is lucky to have his head still on.

"We are hopeful he can pull through. In addition to the neck wound, which is healing, he also has liver and gall bladder problems. He'll be with us for while." Ringo was found exhausted and close to death by ferry terminal worker Marion Jack at Gills Bay in Caithness.

He had a gaping 14in wound, 2in wide and nearly 2in deep, just a fraction from his spine. He was given his name by hospital staff because of the almost circular wound around his neck. Ringo has been given ultrasound scans, antibiotics and pain-killing injections to help him survive.

Jamie added: "He's very lucky - the wound was close to severing the tendon by his spine. He then would have lost motor control and the ability to keep his head out of the water.

"I have never seen such injuries before where a young seal has survived. The fishing line almost decapitated him. "But he is making steady progress. The wound is very nasty but hopefully he will recover fully."

Ginger Taylor named Town of Wrightsville Beach volunteer of the year

2011-02-17T18:35:00.000-08:00

Staff photo by Joshua Curry

Most of the time, it's what you get passionate about is what makes you feel alive. I mean that from the simplest sense. Caring about things outside of yourself can be the most rewarding, and sometimes those rewards come back. I have met Ginger Taylor a few times and was thrilled to see that she has been acknowledged for your passion. Like Danielle Richardet, a local person who has been taking plastic pollution head on and earned her a film in the recent Sundance Film Festival, Ginger is equally committed. Below is her story in the local Lumina News and is a feel good story from my blog for a change.

by Marimar McNaughton
Thursday, February 17, 2011

Nancy Faye Craig is a tough act to follow any day of the week. Since 2003 when the Town of Wrightsville Beach named its Volunteer of the Year award in Craig’s honor, many individuals have followed in her footsteps.
This year’s recipient, Ginger Taylor, Wrightsville Beach Sea Turtle Project volunteer and author of the seasonal weekly blog-style newsletter, "Trashy Talking Turtlers," was the board of aldermen’s unanimous choice.

Taylor, taken by surprise, was presented with a plaque at the Feb. 10 meeting of the BOA.

"I certainly feel so appreciative of receiving this award and just had no idea that I would ever be considered—a true honor to be associated with Nancy Faye Craig," Taylor said.

"I want to share this award with all of the other volunteers who have worked so tirelessly in keeping our beach clean and raising awareness. These volunteers include the WBSTP and the Cleaner Greener Committee and others who often work with no recognition whatsoever. I really feel I have been carried on the backs of the WBSTP volunteers and others because without their work, input and enthusiasm I would have never been able to do all that I have."

Taylor said she also appreciated the board of aldermen for being willing to hear her thoughts and express her opinions and for giving issues like litter awareness its consideration.

"I am proud that WB is working toward improving on what most would describe as an already beautiful beach," Taylor said.

You deserve it Ginger and thank you for all that you do.

Greenpeace Visits Wilmington North Carolina

2011-01-26T00:26:00.000-08:00

“They’ll figure it out.” My friend said to me after we visited the Greenpeace ship, Arctic Sunrise, this past Saturday downtown Wilmington, NC. “They, who’s they?” I retorted. I wanted my friend to come to hear what Greenpeace had to say about the destructive entities of coal. He grew up in North Carolina and devoured the slogan “Clean Coal” like a McDonald’s Big Mac. It looks good, it smells good, it tastes good, but far from being good for you. He, like many of us (including me not long ago) believes that the government will figure it out -that they have the Americans best interest at stake. And they do, except they have to answer to big business first.

Why would I be mentioning this in my Plastic Ocean blog? Like the plastics industry, coal, gas, petroleum and chemical companies are among the richest and strongest companies in the world. Our government knows we need them for jobs and we need the energy they provide along with other perks. In regards to subsidizing oil, Obama said tonight in his State of the Union Address, ”We (our government) need to stop giving millions of dollars to oil companies. I don’t know if you noticed but they’re doing all right on their own.” There was no applause after that statment, but I was cheering from the couch. But yet, he still pushed “clean coal.”
It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, Republican, or Independent. Corporate interests have far more influence on our government policies, so really you’re just choosing which financial backer happens to be holding the strings. That said, how we spend our money affects corporations. OUR money does the voting. We need to all start thinking in terms of how we vote with our money.

I told my friend that if he wanted to help promote the change necessary to “figuring it out” he could stop turning on every light in his place when he wakes up at 6am. Read labels and buy products that are made out of and packaged in recycled materials. Drive less, walk more, eat local foods, don’t take the free mint if it’s wrapped in plastic, bring your own bag, cup, eco ware, refuse single-sized servings, don’t drink bottled water. Reducing the use of heat, air, gas, and plastic will impact the industries that market them and they will be forced to change what they offer. It really is that simple. Vote with your dollar for change. And support non-profits like Greenpeace who doesn't take a penny from industry or government. People committed to clean air, land, and water and to the health of all living things. Thank you David Pinsky for getting UNCW fired up about this past weekend event.

Questions Concerning the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

2011-01-17T06:53:00.000-08:00

A recent survey done by an Oregon State University assistant professor Angelicque "Angel" White concluded that commonly quoted estimate of the North Pacific Garbage Patch is "grossly exaggerated." And its true, an island of trash a thousand miles away from land is not accurate, nor saying its twice the size of Texas is accurate either. Its actually worse. Because if it were, we could clean it up far more easily. Here is a photo of what her research found out there. The sample below it is what we found in the general area. We had a bottle cap in nearly every one of the 54 samples and sometimes more than one. We weren't the only ones collecting them. Bottle caps are the #2 item found on beaches next to cigarette butts (incidentally, made of plastic not cotton).

Sample of the N. Pacific Garbage Patch, Oregon State 2010

Sample I witnessed with AMRF 2009

The problem is by the time most of the plastic reaches this location, its broken down into small pieces. Nice bite size fragments for surface feeding fish. We agree that this is what the said Garbage Patch looks like and we agree that fish are eating it. What I don't agree with is publicly degrading the work of another researcher. And It is poor science if a scientist degrades the work of another verbally without conducting the same experiment and coming up with a different conclusion regarding the 6-1 plastics to zooplankton.

The original expression was that plastic is accumulating in an area twice the size of Texas and then it manifested to an island of plastic twice the size of Texas. The original claim is correct. That was the size of the area sampled by Charles Moore and plastic was found in every sample. It has been the media that has gotten it wrong. Mind you sampling is done with a trawl with an opening less than a meter across and less than a 1/2 meter deep. Its like sampling just a few inches of one thread on a quilt 4 miles in diameter. To find any quantity of plastic 2000 miles away from any land mass is not be undermined as trivial which is a tone conveyed in this article.

After being in both the North Pacific and Atlantic as well as South Atlantic, I would say on average what we pulled out of the Garbage Patch had far higher concentrations. Our surface tows average 1 hour. So the comment " A recent trawl (singular) White conducted in a remote section of water between Easter Island and Chile pulled in no plastic at all." First of all was only one sample and second I would have to ask, how long was your tow? It could be comparing apples to oranges. The problem with assessing the scale of this problem is, like the article says, "plastic is not evenly dispersed" so they could easily missed accumulations of plastic by running short timed samples.

I've been to 3 of the 5 gyres and regardless of size, plastic is everywhere. I haven't seen one sample come back that hasn't had plastic - 54 samples in the N. Pacific, 19 samples in the N. Atlantic, and 64 in the S. Atlantic. Lastly, it has been the media that has taken liberty in hyperbole. The first thing Captain Moore said to me when I met him for the first time was, "it isn't an island of trash out there. That has been journalistic liberties."

Though I agree the hyperbole has created an illusion of an island, the problem is much larger than an island of trash. Below is Marcus Eriksen's rebuttal and far more eloquent.

Beyond the absurdity of a “Texas-sized Garbage Patch” lies a larger menace of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans

Media is sometimes the tail that wags the dog of science. One oceanographer described finding plastic in his relatively tiny Texas-size study area of the North Pacific Ocean, while another began describing these areas of concentration as “garbage patches”. A mis-information frenzie birthed a mis-conception of an island of trash. Hurry, someone plant a flag - sell real estate! Disappointing to the entrepreneurial spirit that aimed to fix it for a fee, there are no such islands. They do not exist. Having traveled 20,000 miles across 4 of the 5 subtropical gyres, returning from crossing the South Atlantic Gyre in December 2010, I assure you that reality is much worse.

It’s a patchy patch. In 1999 Captain Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation based in Long Beach, CA, published an observed 6:1 weight ratio of plastic to plankton in the swirling center of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. I joined him in 2005 and 2008 to the same region. In this decade of research, the foundation was heavily criticized by other oceanographers for quantifying plastic this way. What was hidden in this criticism was the fact that the science of Oceanography was caught off guard. No one knew of this plastic plague on the world’s oceans, until a Long Beach surfer/sailor turned scientist made it known. It is true that plankton is extremely variable, and can bloom and dissipate with the season, temperature, moonlight, and a dozen other variables, therefore the margin of error is huge. But the plastic/plankton ratio serves a good anecdote for relative abundance of plastic to available food for scavenging fish and filter feeders, like from jellies to baleen whales. So, it’s important to describe plastic to plankton ratios as an anecdote, but not worth quantifying.

1999 was not the first time scientist studied plastic pollution in the ocean. Thor Heyerdal observed plastic in 1969 crossing the North Atlantic on Ra I. Two years later Edward Carpenter, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, netted pellets and fragments of plastic pollution between the east coast and Bermuda. Plastic pollution in the North Pacific Gyre was first described by Robert Day in 1989 near the coast of Japan, and in the South Atlantic Gyre near Cape Town, South Africa in 1980 by Robert Morris of the Institute of Oceanographic Science in the UK. It was a quiet, poorly-understood menace that palled in significance and interest to oceanographers. Then the story broke about an island of plastic, with sensationalized accounts beyond science, mythological masses of synthetic detritus, an illusive terra aqua.

“Somebody do something,” cried the ocean advocates, artists, celebrities and politicians. And the scientists followed. Media called them to action. But not before the industrialists. A problem precedes a solution ready to sell. Groups with little or no experience at sea rose to the occasion with fanciful technofixes, contraptions of grandeur, robotic vagabonds to sieve the sea in solitude and bring the trash back to land, or parachutes that spin sickle-shaped islands that net plastic pollution in their path. All have failed, realizing that going to the ocean to remove floating plastic particles is like standing on the top of a skyscraper with a vacuum cleaner to remove air pollution. It’s not impossible, just impractical. There is no island to retrieve. We have run expeditions across the North Pacific Gyre, North Atlantic Gyre, Indian Ocean Gyre, and in December 2010 we crossed the South Atlantic Gyre. We found plastic in every surface trawl, in varying concentrations. Imagine a handful of degraded plastic confetti spread across a football field of the ocean surface. That’s as thick as it gets, but it’s everywhere. It’s a think plastic soup over 2/3rds of the earth’s surface. So far the 5 Gyres Institute has traveled to 4 of the 5 subtropical gyres in the world, conducting over 400 surface trawls, with plastic in every one. That is the menace of plastic pollution. It’s everywhere, thinly distributed, and extremely impractical to clean up at sea.

But if no one cleans it up, will the garbage patches keep growing? No. Studies in the North Atlantic Gyre and North Pacific Gyre have been repeated with interesting results. There’s no massive trend in plastic accumulation over time. Kara Lavender Law, of Sea Education, compiled data from 22 years of data from the North Atlantic Gyre, the same area that Carpenter studied 3 ½ decades earlier. “We observed no strong temporal trends in plastic concentration…” Last week we returned from 31 days crossing the South Atlantic Gyre. As we sailed into Cape Town we revisited half of the locations that Morris studied 3 decades ago and repeated his exact methods. Though our samples have not been analyzed yet, I can anecdotally report that the samples do not appear to show a tremendous trend in plastic accumulation over this time. Sure, there’s more, but the increase does not parallel the rapid increase in plastic production and consumption on land. So where does it go? We believe some sinks as absorbed chemicals, like PCBs, PAHs and other persistent pollutants, and bio fouling make smaller and smaller particles more dense than seawater. Much of it washes ashore on islands in the gyres, like Hawaii and Bermuda, or is kicked out of the gyres onto mainland beaches as the gyre’s center wobbles east and west. Then there’s still room for unknown answers. What we now know is that if we stop adding more plastic to the ocean, in time the gyres will kick out the plastic pollution they currently hold. If you want to clean the gyre, clean your beach.

We want to know a few things. How much plastic is out there, what is the fate of plastic in the ocean, what is the impact of plastic pollution on fish, including fisheries we harvest to feed the world, and how do we end the plague of plastic in the ocean? The 5 Gyres Institute will sail across the South Pacific Gyre in the Spring of 2011 from Valdivia, Chile to Easter Island. You can follow this expedition on 5gyres.org. In January and February 2011, at the moment I’m writing this paper, we are crossing the South Atlantic Gyre again. The South Pacific will be our 5^th gyre, and provide a snapshot of the global distribution of plastic pollution. We will also be freezing fish to look for toxins in tissues, which we are currently doing with fish collected from South Atlantic Expedition. Other expeditions conducted by SCRIPPS, NOAA and Sea Education, are contributing answers to these questions with rigorous science. All of this will be shared by colleagues in March 2011 in Hawaii during the 5^th International Marine Debris Conference.

In the recent decade of rogue-science, media spun mis-information, a new revitalized science of synthetic pollution at sea has emerged, replacing confusion with clarity and commitment by many to solve the problem. The idea of cleanup at sea is no longer a sensible option, knowing that an island twice the size of Texas is actually a thin soup 2/3rds the surface of the planet. Sensible solutions now focus on preventing the flow of waste to waves in the first place.

"Children Swimming with Plastic Fragments"

2010-12-26T12:33:00.000-08:00

Learning about the plastic accumulation in the North Pacific known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I felt I needed to find out for myself if it were true or an urban legend. I also wanted to know, if plastic accumulated in the ocean 1000s of miles away from land mass, did it happen in the other four oceans. My latest journey across the center of the South Atlantic confirmed my suspicions. I have now witnessed for myself that plastic is not only accumulating in the N. Pacific, N. Atlantic, and S. Atlantic, but the photo degraded plastics mechanically broken down by the ocean are often times spit out onto some of the most beautiful beaches in the world.

Here are photos of a couple of samples we took in the S. Atlantic gyre. Note the plastic fragments collected as well as marine life that is a viable food source for the base of our food chain. It is easy to see how predators could mistake plastics for marine life that also gathers at the surface of the ocean. These plastic fragments are the same types of plastic bits I found washed onto the shores of Rio De Janeiro while children were playing in the ocean.

The first time I met with Captain Charlie Moore, (instrumental in bringing awareness to plastic marine pollution), he said to me, "If we don't stop plastic from getting into the marine environment, soon, our children will be swimming in it." That was over two years ago. At the time, he was talking about the North Pacific Garbage Patch expanding to the continental rim. He was right in some respect, though Brazil is in the South Atlantic continental rim. In this video you can actually see the same type of small fragments that we find in our open-ocean samples washing up on beaches in Brazil. The fragments are extremely weathered which indicates it is not from a local source.

Should children be forced to play in ocean water laced with plastic? Should marine life have to suffer because they confused plastic for food?

Sea Beautiful People

2010-12-18T19:39:00.000-08:00

I had the privilege of being at sea with extraordinarily beautiful people. Some of them have made direct positive impacts on "Sea Change" while others have their sleeves rolled up.

Professional Surfer Mary Osborne is now a member of the United Nations Environmental Program after our voyage across the S. Atlantic where she witnessed firsthand plastics accumulating thousands of miles away from land. She will also be getting her blood tested for chemicals associated with plastics.

James Pribram, is a professional surfer and host of "Eco Warrior." He's been instrumental in ocean projects in various parts of the world. From helping to prevent developers from altering shore waters, legalizing surfing in Lake Michigan, to bringing awareness to water quality issues and protecting precious reefs. James is now committed to educating the masses on yet another issue, plastic pollution.

StivWilson, Pangaea Explorations and 5 Gyres Communications Director, was formally the editor-in-chief of Wend Magazine. He quit his day job after voyaging across the N. Atlantic earlier this year and seeing the mass of plastic 1000s of miles away from land. Stiv also played a major role in getting plastic bags banned in Portland, Oregon.

Founder of the Environmental Clean-up Coalition, Rich Sundance Owen, has been working with companies creating technology for cleaning up plastic in the marine environment. His resolve - to clean up the North Pacific Garbage Patch. What we all learned from this voyage was that beach sweeps ARE gyre clean-ups. Cleaning waterways that lead to the ocean are far more productive than traveling 1000s of miles out into the middle of the sea to commence clean-up. Rich has been educating the masses on the problems with plastic pollution through his coalition.

Mary Maxwell seen here repairing the mainsail. We were on nearly every watch together. Through our many hours on watch, I learned about her ideas for bringing awareness to this issue. She works in the hotel industry and this voyage has helped her see the magnitude of this problem firsthand. I have a feeling she is going to be a powerhouse in greening up high-end hotels. A much needed and very difficult proposition. She also has a huge vision - can anyone say Alcatrash? Go for it Mary.

The most informative person to explain the significance of plastic pollution and Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) - Chelsea Rochman. She's a PhD student through a combined program at both University of California, Davis and San Diego State University studying toxicity of Marine Plastic Debris. Here she is using a water sampling device looking for contaminates that we might also find on our plastic samples. Many of the chemicals found in our water at minuscule levels can reach toxic doses when adsorbed onto plastic. Chelsea also collected fish to sample their tissue as well as necropsy their digestive track looking for plastic ingestion. This area of research is relatively new and she is a promising scientist in this field questioning, "If fish are eating our plastic and we are eating the fish, what is the chemical burden from the human consumption of fish?"

A special thank you to Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummings for spear heading the S. Atlantic voyage. To Clive Cosby and Dale Selvam for a safe journey over 4100 nms from Brazil to Cape Town Africa. And to filmmakers Michael Lutman and Jody Lemmon for capturing it all raw.

Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummings

Michael Lutman

Jody Lemmon

In a recent interview, James explained how arduous it is both physically and emotionally to be at sea so long. You are forced to face obstacles of physical harm and look hard down the barrel of your tender psyche. In the end, some of us became more polished. I saw several transform. I'd like to believe my experience in the S. Atlantic transformed me as well. I now have been in 3 of the 5 gyres and feel I can speak as an ocean ambassador on the severe extent of plastic pollution. This voyage making us the VERY first research crew to cross the S. Atlantic surveying for plastic. When asked why is it important to go to such an extent, the answer is simple. Once we understand the global magnitude of this problem, we can no longer point fingers at someone else. And with the research information and these personal experiences, we can start transforming the world to reduce their plastic use.

More later,

Bonnie Over the Ocean

Blog 14 From Wednesday, December 8, 2010 -Last Daze at Sea

2010-12-14T15:31:00.000-08:00

Last post I quoted from the book, “Adrift.” I have also referenced the book in many of my talks explaining how several people have witnessed plastic accumulating in high-pressure systems as far back as 30 years ago. Steven Callahan, the author, being one of them. I lay in my bunk that night fidgeting around trying to make my back ribs happy when it occurred to me that his raft WAS plastic pollution. Much like the plastic we witnessed in the South Atlantic gyre, Callahan possibly traveled the same fate. He drifted outward from land (where he capsized) and was brought to the center of a vortex via wind and current. According to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an expert in ocean current modeling, items can remain inside a gyre indefinitely while some of it is slung out and onto island beaches inside gyres and coastlines. That is precisely what happened to Callahan in 1982. It took 76 days for him to travel into the North Atlantic gyre high-pressure system via wind and current. There, he reported seeing miles of trash better than a thousand miles away from any land mass. Lucky for him, he was spit out of the high-pressure system. Sixteen days later he was nearly washed upon a treacherous island shoreline when three fishermen rescued him.

We arrived in Cape Town, Africa at 2am December 9^th. My team had the last shift from 10pm – 2am. Most of my clothes were either wet from previous watches, or damp from being down below. The homestretch current we were in runs from the Antarctic up the west coast of Africa. The water only 9 degrees Celsius made the Sea Dragon into a giant humidified cooler. Mike, Mary and I huddled on the bow cold bare feet and hands shivering as the wind howled. Quietly we sat staring into the oppressive fog. Foghorns muffled by its thickness as scenes from the movie “Casablanca” ran through my head. Mike shouted to the captain talking him through the green and red shoreline buoys barely visible until we were only several yards away from them. Slowly, the shoreline lights burned through the grayness as street lights lined up like birthday candles welcomed us - Mary Maxwell’s birthday candles.

With all hands on deck Clive at the helm, we quickly and quietly tucked Sea Dragon into port. Thirty-one days at sea had made sailors out of many of us though my skills lean more toward swabbing the decks. With Sea Dragon backed up to the front of the Two Oceans Aquarium, we all got out to stretch our legs. As we walked toward the aquarium, we couldn’t help but notice the dozen or so large silhouettes on a floating platform. Fur seals accompanied by a large sign illustrating how plastic pollution entangles marine mammals. Kudos to Two Oceans Aquarium for not only providing the platform for the wild seals and educational signage, but for also disentangling many of them. According to the assistant director, they remove plastic fishing gear or packaging straps several times a month.

That night was my last night aboard the Sea Dragon, but there is much more to tell. A very special thanks to Danielle Richardet who besides her Sundance Films documentary found time to post my blog and to Jennifer O'Keefe who has always been there for me whether its jumping rope for funds or collaborating. Love to my ladies!

More later.

Bonnie

Treacherous Mountains in the South Atlantic: Day 29

2010-12-07T19:33:00.000-08:00

Blog 13-- Tuesday, December 7, 2010

So imagine that you wake up in the morning and your house is on such a slant that you have to walk on the moldings to get to the bathroom That is exactly what I had to do this AM. Gravity pulls at you like a giant serpent wanting to throw you down. You fight with every knuckle, every limb, and all her core strength to move inches at a time. Occasionally, it will mix it up and heave you a foot in the air then slam you back down. You put down your best Spiderman landing and try to stick.

Anna flying!

No one is allowed on deck without a life vest and strapping in. On my 2am-6am watch I was eating oatmeal when a wave decided I had enough. It washed me 6 feet across the cockpit and stole my oatmeal. The Sea State is "roughly" a six with gale force winds in the 30s. We're making great time and could be in Cape Town on the 8th. As I sit here at the saloon table typing, shards of sunlight flicker through the gallery windows as waves crash over the bow. Chelsea came down from her watch to check on her -20˚ freezer that doesn't like working on a slant. She was soaked, pounded by the waves.

We are less than 300 nautical miles from Cape Town and will have to endure these treacherous mountains until the end. Cape Town is near the horn of South Africa where two ocean currents wrestle it out for control.

I am reading "Adrift," by Steven Callahan. It's a true story of him surviving 76 days at sea in his emergency raft he named "Ducky." It happened in 1983. I'll leave you with this passage from the book and why what we are doing out here matters.

"We [Steven and his raft] drift through a line of weed piled up like autumn leaves. The Sargasso is laced with trash. For sixty days the ocean has been pristine, a world that might never have been touched by man. Ships and a single chuck of Styrofoam have been the only evidence of man still inhabits the earth. Suddenly my surroundings are full of their excrement-- our excrement... The highway of trash stretches from South to North as far as I can see. For hours Ducky wades through one lane of rubbish after another. The highway is miles wide."

This is from his 61st day lost at sea. He must have found the high-pressure system also known as the accumulation zone where we habitually find plastic pollution.

More later.

Bonnie Over the Ocean

Plankton and Micro-plastics in the South Atlantic: Day 26

2010-12-06T05:23:00.000-08:00

Blog 12-- Saturday, December 4, 2010

Stiv says he's been on this boat so long he's starting to have a crush on the lady pictured on the Fire Blanket box in the kitchen. It's a drawing that shows how to put an extinguishing blanket over a stove fire. Rough. Though we all got excited when we saw the whales surface 30 yards out, starboard side, last evening. They were running with us for about five minutes then gone like phantom submarines. We had seen whale spouts off in the far distance days ago, but that was all we could see. This was the first clear sighting and it may have something to do with the amount of plankton we are pulling up in our trawls. Many whales live on a plankton rich diet-- the plankton being a draw for the whales moving in the area. Not surprising the plankton we pull up in our trawls also contains plastic. We will separate the plastic from the plankton, but there is no way for the whales to filter out the micro-plastics that accompany the plankton.

So far we have traveled over 4,026 miles. By the time we arrive in Cape Town, we will have traveled twice the diameter of the moon (2,159.6 miles). We're hoping to land in three days. Clive has a flight back to the UK on the 9th and is looking forward to getting home to his young family. But with fuel running low and random winds, "We'll get there when we get there." Right now we're welcoming a tailwind pushing us forward at 8 knots while we heel portside after weeks of heeling starboard side. Nice to give the other muscles a chance to perpetually flex, though it is tearing my right side that I injured a week ago. Hopefully the movement will help assuage the lumpy mass out.

In all of our travels, we were only in the high-pressure system for three days. Remarkable the amount of trash we were seeing there and now that we are out of the high, plastic items are more widely spread out. That doesn't mean that we don't continue to find and pluck plastic debris from the sea. As far as my research goes, the record continues after three open-ocean gyres voyages-- every sample contains fragments of plastic. We will continue to trawl every 60 nautical miles until we get to Cape Town.

The jumping continues as well. Jennifer has jumped 5000 times while I mend and I have been able to do 3,400. My count is not great considering how much time I've had to do them. Bummer that the days the boat has been a level plane was when I was crippled the worst. I'll get them done evein if I'm jumping at the airport during mega-layovers on my way home-- 21,350 to go-- no problem. Thanks to all of you who have sponsored my trip. I'll have plenty of photos and videos to share once I get to port.

More later.

Bonnie

Gyre-Normous Boa in the South Atlantic: Day 24

2010-12-02T20:12:00.000-08:00

Blog 11-- Thursday, December 2, 2010

There are three teams that do around the clock watches on a rotating basis. The day watches make sure we don't run into another vessel or object; clean the "loos" (bathrooms), the kitchen walls and floors, pump out the gray water tank and cook. At night, we fight to stay awake while watching for debris and ships coming our way. Yesterday morning, it was a good thing what we found appeared during the day. We may not have seen it at night and according to our first mate, it could have done serious damage to Sea Dragon.

Anna was the first to spot it. As she shouted that there was a large object ahead, everyone ran for the deck-- everyone except Mary and me. We were just finishing up one more episode of "LOST." (A distinct sign of addiction.) It wasn't long before Anna came down shaking us from our Mac-trance, "Bonnie, your'e gonna want to see this." When I peered over the port-side of the ship, I felt a little sick at the thought of ignoring her call. I had seen plenty of large ropes in gyres, but this one was the mac-daddy. It had to be at least 30 feet long by 10 inches around and completely entombed with barnacles. A gyre-normous boa constrictor looking rope. It had a huge knot for a head measuring 3-4 feet wide with a tail that dipped into the water column several feet down. We pulled it out of the water better than halfway, but the mast began to complain from the shear weight of it. We stopped. Without a moments notice, Anna leaped onto it and it instantly dwarfed her size. Serving as scale, we took pictures of her on the rope then sadly released it back into the abyss too heavy to pull on board. We were only 20 feet away from it when it became nearly invisible to our naked eyes. This navigational hazard is one example of how plastic pollution can have a direct negative impact on human safety. Sadly, the potential still exists with our find.

(Check back...Photo coming soon!!!!) :)

Every watch it is our responsibility to log the coordinates Latitude and Longitude, time, barometer reading, true wind, distance traveled thus far, and our position in relation to direction of the wind. Today it was especially special. Why? Because we crossed the Prime Meridian. Our longitude read 0.000.0 like the green flash of a perfect sunset. Many of us pack around the chart table with the anticipation like in Times Square New Year's Eve. It was 12:05pm. We might have celebrated with champagne, but had done that the night before drinking a shot of champagne to celebrate Mary Osborne's birthday. I yelled out a special birthday wish to my partner in plastic pollution crime-- Bill Cooper-- in honor of his birthday too.

Though my contusion in my back hasn't moved much, I can no longer hold off on my jumps. Thank you Jennifer O'Keefe for subbing for me. She put in nearly a thousand the last time she checked in. I was able to do 700 yesterday and 200 today with slight improvisation. But there is a rope involved and I am indeed jumping.

More later.

Bonnie Over the Ocean

Getting "Lost" in the South Atlantic: Day 22

2010-11-30T19:15:00.000-08:00

Blog 10-- Tuesday, November 30, 2010

We reached the center of the South Atlantic high yesterday and we are not here in vain. Silently, I had hoped it wouldn't be a repeat of what I witnessed in the North Pacific Garbage Patch. Like cancer that starts in one part of the body and spreads to another, so does plastic in our oceans.

It started with a blue hardhat that we spied moments into our 6am watch. Soon, everyone was on deck busy plucking plastic. Everyone but me. My back continues to keep me up all night and flexibility is limited, so I journal entry all the stuff we are seeing and collecting. Between the perfectly calm seas, feathery clouds to minimize glare, we were all yelling out sightings of plastic. I wrote them down. Most of the debris doesn't present itself until we are right on top of it. Much of it swivels and swirls inches below the surface. Only bottles and buoys set up higher in the water-- things that contain air. Just to name a few of the items that we plucked: Plastic sheeting with mega bite marks in them, bottles, buoys, very fragile and degraded laundry baskets, large fragments bigger than my hand, crates, and the hardhat that had smaller items twisted in it like a corner of a candy-like wrapper!!

I also did several "Timed Observations" yesterday with bionic-eyes Rich, who confessed having something like 20-15 vision. In three hours and from just one portion of the ship (because you cannot get an aerial view), we counted 63 items larger than 3 inches and as big as 3 feet. Unlike the fragments we find in our trawls these fragments were huge.

We stopped the boat long enough for an underwater photo shoot. My GoPro went in with Stiv as he videoed Anna in her Roxy sponsored wet suit. We filmed the debris we had just collected from where we found it but with the water hovering around 60 degrees, they got out and we went on our way.

Now onto our evening activities...

I haven't mentioned it, but there has been an addiction formed on this journey instigated by the pro-surfers and it isn't just the chocolate bars that Anna rations out nearly every night after dinner. It's a fitting title to what we are doing and where we are. Many people get lost at sea, much of our plastic gets lost at sea, and many of us aboard Sea Dragon are in a "LOST" marathon.

For years, my son has been trying to get me to watch the weekly series "LOST." I have not watched a TV show consistently since I left Cortland, NY. Back then the addiction was "Friends." My good friend, Pam Sullivan, and I would meet at a litter bar appropriately named Friends. So we would meet to watch "Friends" at Friends with friends. Now Mary Maxwell and I usually meet at the "saloon table" on our night shifts to watch hours of "LOST." Last night when it was our turn to be out on deck, we had to tear ourselves away from the 2nd to the last episode in the first season. We watched Shannon put a gun up to Locke, pull the trigger and then.... we had to hit the stop button, climb into our foul weather gear, complicated lifejackets, clip-in lines and then head up the stairs into a dome of darkness. The ocean gently lapped against our boat reminding me of Pleasant Lake in Syracuse, NY. Slowly our rods and cones went to work poking holes in the blackness and the sky began to lighten taking our minds off of "LOST." Well, for an hour anyway.

"Be right back," I assured Mary. I popped through the companion-way within seconds. Mary's whites eclipsed the stars. And there we were happy as clams, hunched together in the glow of my Mac screen under the star lit canopy lost in "LOST."

More later,

Bonnie Over the Sea

Also, be sure to check into 5 gyres blog. Stiv Wilson wrote an amazing blog post: Convenience Can Break the Entire Ocean What Bonnie and I (Danielle) did going plastic-free with our food choices for one week (and beyond for me and my family) is one way that we can break this cycle. To learn about living with less plastic, visit Fake Plastic Fish's Plastic-Free Living Guide

Observations in the South Atlantic: Day 20

2010-11-28T04:29:00.000-08:00

Blog 9-- Sunday November 28, 2010

The next best thing to having a pair of good eyes is to be next to someone who does. Rich Owen and I had been doing a field study we call "Timed Observations of Plastic Pollution." It was Saturday, 10:00, I wrote down the coordinates and boat speed on my data sheet then started the timer for one hour. When one of us saw something, the other would confirm the sighting and I'd write down the time, the color, and rough dimensions. When the hour was up, we would get the coordinates to determine how far we went, tally the number of observed plastics and calculate how much plastic we observed over that time and distance. But by 10:10 our focus had shifted.

"Whales!" Rich shouted, "Whale spouts!" I scanned the horizon feverishly until my eyes focused on a water fountain roughly a half mile off portside. It had to have been a big one for us to see the spout so clearly at such a distance. Soon the one turned to a series of them and our marine biologist, Chelsea Rochman, confirmed through binoculars that there was a pod of them. "My fiancé studies whales, he could tell you what kind they are just their spout." Grayson, I had thought to myself. It's a non-fiction book by Lynne Cox we have been passing around aboard ship. (Being out at sea invokes reading.) The story is of a teen-aged girl who is training to break the world record swimming from Catalina Island to Long Beach. One morning, she finds herself being followed by a baby gray whale. You can't put the book down as it tells her story of how she reunited Grayson with his mother and pod. Hearing Chelsea say the word pod brought back the amazing story of this child and her experience of somehow communicating with creatures of the sea. It lends pause to the notion that the last place we should find plastic is in the ocean.

Sometimes marine life confuses plastic as being food and sometimes we confuse marine life for being plastic. For example, Friday, Rich and I were doing one of our Timed Observations when we kept noting what looked like Styrofoam bits or bottle caps every 3-5 minutes floating 20 yards off starboard. They were white and floated high in the water. I'd write it down with a question mark beside it. If they are plastic, why are they all about the same size and traveling so close together?? I knew from previous experiences at sea that like things travel at roughly the same speed and eventually catch up with each other, but this was truly unusual for it to be that consistent. Saturday we found our answer in on of our trawls. Several of these "white bottle-cap" looking things were in our trawl. They are clearly a product of the ocean. Marcus calls them Gooseneck barnacle balls because usually there are gooseneck barnacles attached to them. (Holly can you figure out what the scientific name of them??) If we cannot identify the difference between plastic and marine life, how can we expect marine life to be able to? Here's a twist to the story. Every hour we take the high speed manta trawl out to see if we've caught any fish. Tonight at 3am we pulled the trawl out, opened the codent to find not a single fish!!! But we did catch a bottle cap!

The thing about being on the open-ocean is that you have to be on deck to learn what is out here. If you're down below, you might not make it up the deck stairs to see an amazing opportunity like a sea turtle or dolphins swimming by. I had missed both of those. So we've all learned to be on deck as much as possible and if not have our ears pricked in case someone shouts out a discovery so we can "Flash Gordon" from below.

Black yet Bright Day in the South Atlantic: Day 18

2010-11-26T23:18:00.000-08:00

Blog 8-- Friday November 26, 2010 "Black Friday"

It was a beautiful day, though cool. We had to dip down more southerly to get ourselves into the high pressure system which means it is colder. It would be like driving to New Jersey or Pennsylvania from Wilmington, NC.

The sun was out all day and we all came in with red cheeks and big smiles. The sea state is just above a 2-- winds around 15-20 knots and 1-2 foot waves. A lot of trash. I've been doing my hour-long timed observations. and counted a lot of debris today. We even had a ghost net hung up on our trawl. That's a first. I've not seen that happen in previous voyages.

I processed a couple of our samples from start to finish. I took some pictures and will share once I get to Cape Town. Our plans are a bit sketchy right now. We are running several days late and hope to catch up some time on the way in. The captain has a flight to catch on the 9th and we all plan on going to a eco-tourism white shark cage observation. Should be some great photos from that as well. I'll give the particulars on their process once I know more.

In the meantime, we did our Black Friday shopping collecting free floating debris. All of us are blown away by the amount of stuff we are seeing that the seas have calmed and we're in the high pressure system.

More later.

Bonnie

Blue and Calm in the South Atlantic: Day 17

2010-11-25T09:14:00.000-08:00

Blog 8-- Thursday November 25, 2010

Happy Thanksgiving!

Yesterday, finally we could all spend the day out on the deck. It had been the first since the day we left. It was the place to be. The sky was completely blue and the sea state calmed to a three-- winds between 10-20 knots (a guesstimate since our wind meter is down) and 2-3 foot waves, though there was an occasional rogue wave capable of knocking us off our feet.

It was my watch from noon to 6pm, so I did what I usually do when the weather and visibility allows during my watch-- I spied the seas for plastic. Through the course of two weeks, I had seen a laundry basket, several water bottles, a basketball, and numerous large fragments from unidentifiable items. In all that I had witnessed in the very rough sea state, I saw more in two hours in relatively calm seas. I believe a windrow of plastic was forming. It wasn't the first time that I observed this phenomenon. July of '09, I saw windrows of seaweed called sargassum form in the North Atlantic. Because plastic floats like the sargassum, it actually does form a windrow of plastic during certain sea states. I observed this in the North Pacific gyre with Captain Charlie Moore in the fall of '09.

The windrow was about 20 yards portside. I stood on a three foot high wooden box at the bow of the ship with my GoPro camera strapped to my forehead hoping the fisheye lens would be able to capture the debris floating by. Anna had been standing on the box moments before holding onto the guide wire and when a rouge wave would hit, she'd pull herself up, lifting her legs like a pole dancer to avoid getting wet. But once she noticed the plastic floating close to the ship, she took action. I filmed. I had moved to the box to get a better angle of the teamwork that irrupted-- getting nets out, taking down sails, and slowing the boat so that we could start collecting debris. Anna was going after one bottle when I noticed another one coming at her. I yelled to her, "Anna, look there's another one!" Just then a rogue wave slammed into the side of the ship. I had been holding on with one hand and pointing with the other. I quickly grabbed on with both hands as I began to spin around the guide wire that Anna had used, but with not so graceful moves. As my body spun, my feet were planted and something had to give. Unfortunately, I felt my hands slowly slip off and I dropped down 3 feet hard, slamming my right side onto the edge of a porthole frame. I heard a very distinct pop. I lied there completely out of sight from the others. I laid perfectly still telling myself, "I am not broken, I am not broken." Though I was sure I had cracked a rib.

I slowly peeled myself off the floor, confident that I had talked my body out of being seriously injured. I had to. There was way to much action going on. Marcus came to the bow to pull down the staysail, Dale maneuvered the boat so we could attempt to net plastics. Some of the crew had cameras in hand to catch images while the others had nets.

Yet it didn't matter which way we went, the plastics alluded us. In total frustration, Marcus took off his shirt and dove in, grabbed a floating water bottle, put it between his teeth like a retriever and started swimming back. But just as the plastics had out maneuvered us, so began the challenge of pulling Marcus out of the water. Ten minutes went by. Every time he swam toward us, a wave would come and wash him back. He struggled a bit to tell us the water was cold. Fear started to set in. At one point he was 30 yards out. With the fantastic navigational abilities of Dale and Clive, we were able to get him back on board. The exercise reiterated just how difficult it is to find, then extract someone if they go overboard.

As for me, I'll be gimping around for a little bit. Mary Osbourne gave me her chilled water bottle to use as ice, then later applied some icy spray. Chelsea Rochman generously gave me Advil and her bag of Jelly Bellies her friend labeled "Do not open until your birthday." Prematurely opened by two days. How sweet was that!! Later, Dale gave me a chilled hemorrhoid gelatinous ring (you use what's available on a ship) and my watch team let me sleep instead of getting up for my 2am-6am watch. I'm in good hands.

Our two samples yesterday were among the largest we've collected from the manta trawl so far. (How I wish I could send pictures!!) Evidence of plastic accumulates in the high? Perhaps. We should have perfect conditions from here to Cape Town to get good samples.

We'll be having Thanksgiving dinner out in the cockpit and will share what we are thankful for. After yesterday, I've added a few more things to my list.

More later.

Bonnie spies over the ocean

Wind, Rain... and Blue!--South Atlantic: Day 15

2010-11-24T14:04:00.000-08:00

Blog 7-- Day 15: Monday, November 22, 2010

Monday proved to be another trying day. Our True Wind Speed meter stopped working, but one doesn't need to know the exact number to feel the sensation of the flying and floating with occasional speed bumps. Flying up to 50 knots and hitting one head-on creates havoc, like in "Jaws" when he slammed Shawn Connery's boat.

It isn't just the wind. Rogue waves can also be damning. James Pribram had just stepped up on deck, clipped in and then wham. An enormous wave came over portside and washed him from the cockpit (a sitting area in front of the companion way) and carried him 20 feet. It flipped him over the mainsail traveler, mashed him into and then over the railing to the steering column... then he felt his clip snap into action. Jerking him to a holt, it then dropped him on the wooden slotted floor a foot from the deep blue. Had he not been clipped in, he may not have stopped. The back of the boat was completely filled with water. He said he had a vision of being in the water and watching the sails fade in the distance. It was a warning to us all that it only takes one split second for things to go wrong. Bruised but not broken our star surfer is okay. James is not only a professional surfer, he has his own TV show called "Eco Warrior" and is a freelance writer. Give him a Google... he's a multi-gifted character activist, athlete, and writer who's personable and handsome like my son. (Sorry, had to throw that in)

Yesterday, I spent four hours on deck and watched the wind poke holes in the gray blanket that has been following us for nearly 500 nautical miles. At 6am, the sky thick with gloom. By 9am, the large blue patches reflected off the ocean creating a multi-blue plaid pattern. Our observations of plastic trash floating by has increased somewhat, maybe because we are nearing the high pressure system, maybe because the sea state has calmed some to allow debris to pop up through the water surface or both. Our samples continue to collect plastic fragments.

Marcus and I were discussing ways to convey to the world just what these samples mean. I likened it to a fine quality of fabric that has a three mile radius and we are sampling just one small portion of just one thread. His analogy was that we are sampling a razors edge in an area the size of a football field.

At midnight, I was back on watch and finally got to see the full moon we feared we'd miss. It lit up the sky blocking out most of the stars but entertained me with a rainbow ring of brilliant orange and yellow. Another first.

More later.

Bonnie

Be sure to visit 5 Gyres blog to learn more about the above photo :)
5 Gyres Blog: I Can See Clearly Now the Rain is Gone

Even Angry Seas Can't Wash Away Plastic...South Atlantic: Day 13

2010-11-23T18:42:00.000-08:00

Blog 6-- Day 13 Sunday November 21, 2010

I wish I could send pictures, words cannot describe and even pictures struggle to convey what has been unleashed upon us.

Twice a day the Captain gives us a weather report. For the past week he says roughly the same thing, "It will just be another 24 hours of high winds according to our weather forecast ." Today he paused, then added, "Yeah, whatever." Funny to hear even him grumble a bit. Too many days we've been hopeful for just one ray of sunshine. Just one. We can handle being knocked about collecting bruises, but no sun and high winds means staying down below if not on watch

For the past two weeks, whenever the weather gets the craziest, Anna and Marcus attempt to make us feel better by saying, "At least it isn't as bad as it was in the North Atlantic in January." Yesterday, the North Atlantic was surpassed. Fifty-one knot winds pounded into our sails. The "Cape Fear" movie sound effects howled and moaned as the water sprayed up over the deck. Vertical rain pelted our eyes. Yet, as the angry sea attempts to wash us away, it cannot wash away the plastic that we invariably see floating by. Random parts of once bigger objects surface then disappear. I wonder to myself where the other parts are.

More news. It took two days to repair our main sail that tore last week. Yesterday, the repaired tear was dwarfed by yet a larger one. In fear of damaging another sail, we now lumber through the water at about three knots just using our Staysail. Currently we are three days behind schedule, but the Captain assures us that we will make up time once we get into the high pressure system-- our targeted research site.

I spent six hours on the deck Saturday regardless of the wind and rain. The air is so amazingly fresh, nothing back home compares. We have no idea what air should really breath like and most definitely, the air "fresheners" pull us further from what it truly is. I enjoy watching the petrels and albatross laugh at the wind as they dart around the waves at 50 knots. It temporarily beats staring at a computer screen for eight hours a day.

By the way, Butchie you were right (again). My fingernail that I pinched in the tile cutter two months ago is on its way off. I liken it to losing a tooth as a child. It probably seems worse than it actually is. But losing a fingernail is better than losing our opportunity to collect good samples. So we wait it out another day.

Clear skies and calm seas please.

Bonnie

For more about what's happening with the crew in the South Atlantic, be sure to visit:
www.5gyres.org

Rough Seas in the South Atlantic: Day 11

2010-11-23T13:45:00.000-08:00

Blog 5 Day 11 Friday November 19, 2010

Rain-- inside and out due to the combination of, well, rain and waves crashing over the bow. Water is stealth in finding any orifice to climb into and it found at least one. After coming off a hair-raising watch, Rich and I climbed down to the galley to get some hot tea. The captain made the order to tack portside and moments later a gallon of water poured over our heads missing us by inches. Without a word, Rich grabs a pan and I look for something to wipe up the water.

"We're on a boat," the captain says nonchalantly, "boats leak."

A little background info-- there are three watch shift crews.

Bay Watch: Chelsea Rochman, Anna Cummins, Marcus Ericksen, and Michael Lutman.

Surf Watch: Mary Osbourne, James Pribram, and Jody Lemmon.

And then there's my team... Rolex Watch: Rich Owen, Mary Maxwell, and Stiv Wilson.

We either do 8 or 10-hour split shifts per day. (as Rich repeatedly says, "I didn't see this in the brochure.") So Wednesday night, we were on from 6pm to 10pm shift (after being on watch from 2am-6am earlier that day.) The head winds were pulling us along through the waves and rain at about 25 knots. THEN a huge 10 knot gain hit us in our already over-filled sails and the boat heeled dragging the handrails on the starboard side through the 20 foot patches of sea foam our boat laid-- like rubber pavement. Mary and I were nearly pitched like stones from a slingshot from the portside into the drink on the starboard side. Sitting yet standing on the wooden rail screwed into the floor of the cockpit for that very reason-- we braced ourselves...white knuckled fingers and toes. The captain, who had been sleeping at the time raced up the steps in his undershorts, "Is everything under control?" And soon it was once we reduced a reef line and took down the front sail.

These conditions are not conducive for getting good samples. Like the sea life that hunkers down under the turbulent surface, so does the plastic. Yesterday, we did manage to see a basketball float by but out of reach. And our last samples amazingly still had plastic in them. One has to wonder:

How much plastic is really out here if we are still picking it up when it is known to be forced, down deeper into the water column when the ocean surface is rough.

South Atlantic: Day 9

2010-11-17T21:19:00.000-08:00

Blog 4: Wednesday, November 17, 2010

The wind continues to howl with headwind gusts up to 27 knots making it difficult to sail in the direction we need to go. So we tack getting nowhere fast.

Everyone knows when we "come-about" everything moans in unison with movement, including a few stomachs. Clanging like a really bad marching band as our world shifts to a new found position. We are healing (leaning) starboard side and I'm almost standing while sitting using my feet to brace myself. Walking is likened to the uneven room in Ripley's Believe It or Not Fun House. To walk toward the port side of the ship is like climbing Mount Everest-- step and reach for something to grab onto-- step and reach. It's a total body workout.

My jumping rope challenge is exactly that!! I had to improvise to a swinging rope that I jump over while holding on for dear life. As Anna Cummins assured me, "Your sponsors will understand. They wouldn't want you to risk your life." There are three locations large enough for me to jump without interruption. One is at the bow (bad idea!!) in front of the steering column at the stern and if we aren't healing, I can jump in a 2 foot space on the starboard (right) side. It's a challenge no doubt, but one I gladly take up in appreciation for the financial support that I have been given by those who support this cause. Better than a third of my goal has been brought in.

Regardless of the rough seas, we have done 12 trawls. Every trawl has collected plastic. (Unfortunately, I don't have any photos to share with you... in the mean time please visit www.5gyres.com). Yesterday, we also caught a mahi-mahi fashioning a bright blue, yellow and green dorsal fin with cobalt blue spots on its 29" metallic body.

We continue to eat well. Last night it was sushi with a shot glass of wine. We laughed as our "chef" donned a Rising Sun homemade bandana. Priceless.

We finished the night with me giving a talk about my Plastic Ocean Project and how it has transformed me from a wallflower to an advocate for a better planet.

More tomorrow.

Jumping Ship Update

2010-11-14T19:18:00.000-08:00

November 14, 2010

The seas have been too rough for Bonnie to jump until yesterday (November 13), when it calmed down to 18-20 knot winds. She improvised jumping over the stay sail sheet which is a line that is rather loose.

Bonnie did a thousand jumps which is what Kim Fisher challenged her to do. Thanks Kim!!

This brings Bonnie's jumps up to 3700 completed where she completed MJ Giammaria's challenge and started on the next batch.

Bonnie wrote:

"Thanks to all of you who helped me get here. I wouldn't have made it without you."

And from me (Danielle), if anyone would like to help Bonnie further please don't hesitate to challenge her to jump ship... $1 = 10 jumps....every bit helps... visit www.theplasticocean.org to contribute to the exploration of plastics in our oceans and become part of the solution. :)

South Atlantic: Day 3

2010-11-13T09:11:00.000-08:00

It's Saturday, the 13th, and we're hoping it's a lucky day for us. Not that is has been totally bad. NPR contacted us. Marcus and Anna will be on so be sure to listen. I'll let you know when. Our communication system is still troubled so I have to type everything on the ship's computer which is really tough. I cant send pictures yet which is another bummer because there is such beauty out here. We've seen albatross, petrels, and frigget birds. Last night the sky began clearing on my 10-2am shift and we saw stars in the sky as well as in our wake. Bioluminescence sparked our white caps. Amazing gazing with my shift peops, Stiv Wilson, Mary Maxwell, and Rich Owen.

Jennifer and Danielle, I'm sure you're itching to know about the samples. We continue to find plastic in each trawl, but nothing like we found in the N. Pacific or the N. Atlantic. We're still 500 miles outside the small accumulation zone we are going to hit, then on to the largest one in the S. Atlantic. We'll send pictures when it is possible. Jody Lemmon put out a fishing line and caught a lid-fish - a 15 inch garbage pail lid.

No fish yet after 2 days, but we did catch plastic!!

Today we woke to our first blue sky. Like moths to a flame, it brought many of us from our berths early. We're hoping the days of 30 plus knot winds and rough seas are behind us.

Stay tuned.

Bonnie

South Atlantic: Day 2

2010-11-13T09:04:00.000-08:00

A day of illness and uncertainty by some crew member. A few have questioned the decision to climb aboard the Sea Dragon. As we pass an ocean field of oil rigs, one imagined a way to get to a rig, climb aboard, request a helicopter, fly to back to Brazil and catch a flight home. Can't blame them, we started our day with a torn mainsail, the water pump on a constant fritz, an hour of promising sun devoured by saturated clouds that let loose. But the biggest blow came when the captain reported a virus in our main computer-injected from a memory stick knocking out our weather and communications systems. Our stomachs tightened. Thirty knot winds punched our sails with random blows above while 12' waves threw upper cuts - a KO for Mike who has been suffering the worst seasickness. Perhaps I'm the sick one, but I am still enjoying the adventure. Confident we have the right people on board to keep the boat afloat while we contend with the conditions when we start doing our trawling.

I spied a palm-sized, songbird displaced on our deck. It look up at me timid and confused wanting to go home as well. Last we saw of it, it took to the sea attempting to ride the gusts that ride the waves. It flapped in a panicked state as a 10' wave came directly for it. It disappeared behind the wave - surely it had been steamrolled, but no. It rose above the wave just as it curled and we all cheered.

I tried to imagine its journey traveling 220 miles without food or water. I had hoped it would stay as some sort of boat bird - safe from the wind and rain. But realized even if it did make the journey to S. Africa, it would be the only one of its kind there, devoured in minutes.

At best, it could make it to the oil rigs, rest awhile before making the last 100+ miles. What are its chances? What were the chances of me, a 51 year-old woman from landlocked Elmira, NY crossing the S. Atlantic?

More later,
Bon

Sea Dragon Ship's Blog
5 Gyres blog

South Atlantic: Day 1 Noon Position

2010-11-13T08:59:00.000-08:00

Day 1 Noon Position

I’m having a cheerio time being bounced around the ship sleeping in a cave. Its fun - oddly enough. My berth is under a double sized though it isn’t as big, its bigger than most. I have to climb down into it.   It’s a completely different ride than Algalita’s 50’ catamaran I was on last year in the North Pacific. It’s quieter, but heels a lot more and has much less open space for jumping. I’ve completed 2700 jumps so far of the 30,050. The challenge continues if anyone wants to participate www.theplasticocean.org

The sea is too rough for us to sample the first few days, with winds between 18-22 knots and a Sea State around 6. I’m the oldest one on the crew – comforting isn’t it? But, our young Captain Clive Cosby is not only super human, trained in racing sail ships, and in fact sailed around the world with this very vessel, he is brilliantly funny.   Did I mention the boat I am on has been in the Challenge Race?

Half the crew has fallen ill to the steady rock and “normal” boat smells. (I won’t go into that) We’ve traveled 250 nm (nautical miles which are slightly longer miles) since our departure on Sunday at 6pm. We got a late start waiting for the tide to fill the bay and the fuel to fill our tanks. It took over an hour to pump around 1800 liters - $3600 worth.

The last night I stayed on the ship solo, readying my cave. Earlier in the day I took one for the team trying to catch the dock before our dingy bounced off it. I lunged for the dock catching it with my fingertips, pulling the dingy of seven people with white knuckled proved to be unsuccessful and I went face first into the drink. So I decided to stay back, clean and use the bread maker on board. The captain assured me it was easy. The list of seven ingredients taped to the inside of the baking supply cabinet door, pen scratched, protected by cellophane. “You can’t screw it up,” he said in his British italicized words. “It mixes and bakes itself. Wake up in five hours and it’s done!”

After finally finding everything I needed that wasn’t in baking closet, I shut the lid, push select – 5 hours, “start” then went to bed with a warm and fuzzy thought that we would all wake up to warm “homemade” bread.

I woke up to the early morning sunrise with the captain gently calling my name crouched beside my berth. “Bunny, look . . . our furst loaf of bread. It’s going to be our boat mascot,” said chocking off a laugh. I opened my eyes to a beautifully bronzed loaf of bread about 3 inches tall.   I sat up in shocked! But his giggle viraled mine. I entered the galley and took a few wise cracks while Anna Cummins found the beauty in it and dared to take a piece.

It wouldn’t be until that night when Captain Clive absolved me when he pulled out his freshly created loaf only to find it was the same size. Hah!

The moral to the story? Don’t try to use beer yeast to raise bread, if the label wasn’t written in Portuguese, we might have figured it out.

More later.

Bon

Also, be sure to visit:

5 Gyres blog
Sea Dragon Ships blog

(By the way, "Hi! I'm Danielle! I'll be posting everything that Bonnie sends me from the South Atlantic to The Plastic Ocean Project blog. Should you have any questions or curiosities about the voyage, please comment and I'll be sure to ask Bonnie for you!!)

Follow us across the South Atlantic

2010-11-06T13:58:00.000-07:00

I´m in Rio typing from a cafe that you pay by the minute so I´ll keep it short. We set sail on Monday leaving from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Cape Town, Africa. We are a team of 13. Already we have seen devastated waters along streams and rivers here and along the shoreline. Rio is one of those places that brings mountain ranges right up to the curb of the ocean. Houses are carved out in the mountains side and bring bright colored flats that liven-up the deep green vegatation. Beautiful. I´ll send pictures tomorrow. Until then, if you want to learn more about this 1st time ever transect looking for plastic in the marine environment, go to
The blogs:

5 Gyres Blog
Pangaea Exploration Blog
Live Map of Sea Dragon's position can be viewed here: https://mail.uncw.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=9a7db702e0a34cdd904e0a576a1e1afc&URL=http%3a%2f%2fshare.findmespot.com%2fshared%2ffaces%2fviewspots.jsp%3fglId%3d0P7xy7st1XCfoqrH8BzGKXcpWBMuEWFIa WEATHER
Friends and family can keep track of the weather we're getting here: https://mail.uncw.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=9a7db702e0a34cdd904e0a576a1e1afc&URL=http%3a%2f%2fpassageweather.com%2f

More later.

TEDx Great Pacific Garbage Patch

2010-11-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

What started my curiousity regarding the issue of plastic marine pollution was learning about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in a grad course I was taking in 2008. So you can only imagine how jazzed I am about TEDx hosting a HUGE patch of some powerful and knowledgable people on this very subject. So make a date with your computer on Saturday to watch the conference on this very subject.

Watch live streaming video from tedxgp2 at livestream.com

Just an update on my fundraising for research in the South Atlantic open-ocean, I'll be jumping 29,050 times between being on Brazil soil to being on S. Africa's. My goal is 100,000 so if you can spare some change, make me jump. www.theplasticocean.org. Or if you prefer to make Jennifer O'Keefe jump, just say so in your donation and we'll get her in the act too!!!!

Jumping on Ship

2010-10-31T06:50:00.000-07:00

As an attempt to come up with the funding necessary for me to join 5Gyres and Pangaea Explorations, I'm jumping rope for cash. http://theplasticocean.org/ check it out.
I'll jump 100,000 times to raise $10,000 necessary to join the research crew sampling plastic on the first every transect from Brazil to S. Africa sampling for plastic marine debris.

Why is it so important? There are 5 major gyres in our world ocean and they have a reputation for accumulating our plastic thousands of miles away from any land mass. Because we don't see it, we don't know its there. If we don't know its there, we can't know the negative impact. We can't fix what we don't know is broken. And our mass production and overuse of plastic is a broken system. If we don't figure it out soon, children will be swimming in waves of plastic fragments like I witnessed in Bermuda.

Why its a problem is because plastic is mostly chemical compounds, harmful chemical, especially #3, PVC. One of the most widely used plastics in the world is the most toxic. In fact, PVC is known as the "Poison Plastic," the plastic we use to make baby toys and shower curtains. " Did you ever wonder what that smell is when you open a packaged new shower curtain? That is harmful chemicals off-gassing into your lungs. It get into our water and our marine life. Research done by Dr. Roger Payne on over 900 whales, all contained PVC compounds.

Following a national campaign by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice (CHEJ) and other environmental groups, PVC is slowly being eliminated from our store shelves, but is far from gone. PVC often contains lead and pthalates, which have been linked to reproductive problems in humans and release carcinogens when incinerated." (4 Things not to Buy at Target)
Follow us across the S. Atlantic – it promises to be an education, an adventure, and a first!

Letting the Fox out of the Bag

2010-10-09T20:16:00.000-07:00

So I probably haven't mentioned that I ride a motorcycle. Some would tease, if it isn't a Harley its a glorified motorized bike. I like my little Honda Rebel 250 for one because it gets about 80 miles to the gallon. It's my only mode of transportation and is plenty enough hog for me. But after today, I maybe having a change of heart.

My new found motorcycle friends all ride Harleys. On Saturdays the owner of Carolina Coast Harley-Davidson, Rick Noyes, provides free hot dogs and soda at his Market Street store in Wilmington and that is where you will often find my friends. This Saturday was no exception, but what they witnessed was. Crossing six lanes of very busy traffic came a small gray fox, which was feat enough, only this little guy had a plastic bag completely over its head. According to my friends, it could barely see as it made its way passed them and headed toward the back of the shop where they lost sight of him.

"Don't tell Bonnie," said LT Hines, "What ever you do." Butch Barnhardt told Bonnie and sure enough they all had a good laugh when I said "let's go find it." Butch was the only taker and he whined the whole way. "What are we gonna do if we find em?" Planless, he still couldn't stop me.

I wandered around along a hedgerow near where they last saw the fox. I found 12 plastic bags of all shapes, sizes, and brandings in just 10 square feet and thought, "no wonder." Now days, we find more plastic on the roadside than wild flowers, or wild anything for that matter, and maybe it is the fact that not only are people crowding out nature, but plastic debris is too. Anyway, we came up upon the owner's son who not only saw the poor traumatized fox, but took matters into his own hands. He and another co-worker corralled the fox. With one guy in front, Rick's son pulled the bag off of its head! He explained how there was so much moister inside the bag from the fox breathing that it was all fogged up. The bag had something sticky like candy that matted into its hair and caused it to stick even more - probably what the fox was looking to eat in the first place. check out this video: http://www.facebook.com/bonnie.holden.monteleone#!/video/video.php?v=485673523407

So here is why the issue of over-use of one time use plastics is so important to me. We have no idea how many animals are maimed and die slow painful deaths due to our inability to manage plastic waste. And the worst part is, this plastic is a resource! Its petroleum energy that we can either recycle into other useful items, burn for electricity, or turn into gasoline. Instead of doing damage, it could be helping our energy crisis. If that doesn't convince you, how about this. Try not to use one time use items like plastic bags because they are made out of petroleum. By doing so we could use the petroleum for better uses. And if you have to use bags, recycle them at your local grocery store, but don't throw them away or let them get away into the environment.

Just a reminder, please support my research into the South Atlantic Gyre sampling nearly 3500 nautical miles from Brazil to Cape Town, South Africa. This research in conjunction with http://www.5gyres.org/ and http://www.panexplore.org/ educates the masses on the problems with plastic especially on animal life. We leave in less than a month - please visit http://www.theplasticocean.org/ and click on donate!

A Week Without Food Wrapped in Plastic

2010-10-05T01:07:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a good way to lose weight, try to eat foods untouched by plastic. In keeping with Fake Plastic Fish and It Starts with Me blogs, I attempted to take on their challenge - A week without food wrapped in plastic. Unlike Danielle Richardet, who has a husband and small children, I only had to fend for myself. So while she was planning meals around the plastic obsticle course and learning how to make almond milk from scratch weeks before, I was working on how to raise $10,000 for my upcoming 4000 mile voyage in the South Atlantic. Needless to say, when the week of deprivation started, I was scrammbling to find anything that wasn't wrapped in or poured out of plastic. The latter one being an even bigger challenge. About my only true dependency is half and half creamer for my coffee. Try to find one that doesn't have a silly plastic spout. About three days into the challenge, I found Sealtest uses a carton the old fashion way, no plastic liner, no plastic cap, and spout. It was at Fresh Market where I also picked up organic carrots bound by a rubberband, soups in glass jars and metal lids, and canned soups and fruit without the plastic BPA lining. My cart was a work of art!
What I did learn was seldom does our food go without touching plastic at one point or another. For example, Fresh Market had beautiful stakes in their meat case. I seldom eat meat, but this looked tempting. I asked to have it wrapped in butcher paper and explained why. "Oh, lady, all of our meats are shrink wrapped in plastic when they are shipped to us." Okay, never mind. I went on to the breads. Spying some french bread wrapped in paper, I pulled a sleeve out of the wooden basket and sure enough, there was a plastic window on the sleeve of paper. For real? I then went back to the counter asking if they had any bread in the back that I could buy that wasn't put in a paper sleeve yet. "Oh, lady, we get all our bread dough sent to us in plastic bags, we then bake them here." Ugg. I moved on. I found myself in front of the bulk food items with brown paper bags in hand and as I started to scoop, my daughter said, "Aren't those bins plastic?" I had to compromise on this one.

I visualized what it must be like first thing in the morning just at Fresh Market. Bags from bread and desserts being tossed as trays are filled being readied for the oven. Bag after bag of individually wrapped cuts of meat sliced opened then quickly tossed. Cheeses, fruits, vegetables, unbagged for the display case.

What I realized is that this plastic use issue has many tiers. The amount of plastic waste before we get it to our store shelves has to be astronomical. It's no wonder it ends up every where. So, how we can reduce some of this use is buying in bulk, choose not to use single wrapped items (that are most often over processed), and look hard for the things you like that are devoid of plastic. You just might find there are businesses out there that share the same value.

In the News

2010-10-02T04:55:00.000-07:00

These are the groups Jennifer and I have had the pleasure to connect with. Next month I will be collaborating with most of them - 5Gyres, Algalita, Pangaea in an open ocean voyage across the South Atlantic. All of them have been making a splash in the media!

Awesome interview with 5Gyres' Anna Cummings and Marcus Eriksen on Eco Company - a national TV show.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the amazing research done by Sea Education Association from Woods Hole, MA and what they have been reporting in regards to plastic in the marine environment will blow you away. Recently, they were in the National Geographic Daily News. Check out the trigger fish that had 47 pieces of plastic in its stomach.

Algalita Marine Research was highlighted in Trash Inc: The Secret Life of Garbage

Pangaea Explorations wins award.

Big News on the Plastic Ocean Front

2010-09-29T21:30:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I had an email conversation with 5Gyres' Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummings along with Ron Ritter from Pangaea Explorations and its official. I will be flying to Rio De Janeiro on November 4th, climbing aboard the Panaea Explorations RV Sea Dragon and sailing to Cape Town, Africa. We will be sampling the center of the South Atlantic gyre while out at sea for nearly a month.

Here's an opportunity for you to vertually ride along in the warm spring air while it turns colder in the Northern hemisphere. I'll be sending photos and possibly short videos of our findings as well as how 14 of us live on a 72 foot ship. But I could use help from my friends. My share of the expenses is $7000. If you want to learn more and perhap consider making a small donation to our research, check out http://www.theplasticocean.org/. You'll find lots of pictures and videos from my last voyages out into the N. Atlantic and N. Pacific.

Big Sweep - our part of the International Coastal Cleanup

2010-09-17T05:27:00.000-07:00

Each year, hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the globe clean their local waterways during the International Coastal Cleanup. The volunteers fill out datacards, which creates a really interesting and useful database of information.

This is the 25th anniversary of the ICC, and it's been held in North Carolina since 1987. North Carolina was the first state in the nation to begin a statewide cleanup of waterways, which is now called Big Sweep.

Please join this global event wherever you are. If you can't find an event listed near you, contact local agencies as their events may not be posted on the ICC website. If there isn't an event just grab your family and friends and start something. Learn more about the ICC here or Big Sweep here.

In New Hanover County, we'll hold Big Sweep on September 25 at 9am at Wrightsville Beach, Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Greenfield Lake. The flyer and details are here.

See ya there.

posted by Jennifer O'Keefe

SEAing is Believing

2010-08-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

SEA (Sea Education Association) from Woodshole has published the longest running research on plastic accumulating in the N. Atlantic gyre in this months edition of Science Magazine and has been getting much deserved publicity this week. Scores of friends and family have shared the many different venues of SEA's coverage. Thanks for the heads-up by Danny Barefoot, I found the radio interview with Kara Lavender Law on NPR.

After learning about Algalita Marine Research Foundation two years ago, I wanted to know if the plastic was accumulating in the Pacific, was it accumulating in the Atlantic. That is what inspired my research because no one was talking about there being a problem in the Atlantic. This January I presented with Kara Lavender Law in Oregon and found out about their 24+ years of data.

This summer they found 1069 pieces of plastic in just one half hour tow and we hope to reference their work with what we found once we work up our samples. Upon returning from our open ocean voyage in the N. Atlantic our ship this July, we parked next to the SEA's ship Cornwith Cramer and we had the privilege of touring the brigantine. I thought I might share some footage from our tour. Pardon the shakes with the iPhone - what you see mostly is their science lab.

This is a sailing vessel so you can only imagine how much work goes into putting up the sails along with retrieving samples and running experiments. Here you'll see just how much line in on board as the captain explains how they deploy their manta trawl off the side of the ship.

Here we have the living arrangements below. Note the bookcase on the fore wall and the sleeping bunks or berths along the walls in the common area where they eat and socialize.

What needs to be mentioned here is that SEA has been looking at plastic in the marine environment for over 24 years, yet their finding were not publicized until this year. Unlike Captain Charlie Moore, a person who not only observed the overwhelming amount of plastic in the ocean, sampled it, learned of its high concentrations and the devastation it brings to marine life, but he took his findings to the press because he knew the only way to stop it was to let the general public know there was a problem. Sometime scientists gets so caught up in the study that they leave out the importance of letting the public know their findings. Sometimes its due to the media getting it wrong either by over stating or sensationalizing or misquoting bringing embarrassment to reseachers.

Scientists have been studying plastic in the marine environment since the 70s and yet it wasn't until Algalita Marine Research Foundation got it to the mass media has it gained any awareness. Thank you Charlie Moore and Algalita for not only bring this issue to the forefront for me, but also for inspiring the research of SEA to bring their findings to the general public!

Plastic Energy

2010-08-14T03:22:00.001-07:00

It’s been a month since our second voyage into the North Atlantic gyre. We have been having problems with our blog and between preparing samples, giving talks, the day job, and family the blog has sat unattended. Sorry for the delay. Part of the problem has been having so much to say and needing some time to get to it. So I’ll start with this, plastic is energy and it takes energy to collect this energy, just like drilling for either natural gas or petroleum. The difference is, this energy - plastic energy - is much easier to get to in most places, except of course the middle of the ocean. Not because there is a lack of plastic in the out there, it’s that we have access to this resource in our trash cans, landfills, on our streets and beaches. In Bermuda, plastics from the continental rim (US, Canada, Europe, and Africa) end up on their beaches. It’s like oil in that it floats, destroys marine life, and is a waste of a commodity. Wait, did I just call plastic a commodity?
This picture illustrates the beauty of Bermuda’s water, yet , look closely at all the plastics that has washed in. Plastic trashing beaches when it can be turned into electricity and fuel.

Whale Bone Bay in Bermuda is on the North Eastern lee side/windward side that faces the direction of the N. Atlantic accumulation zone. Here is what a portion of one cubic meter collected off this remote beach looked like. Note the amount of plastic intermingled with natural debris.

After sorting it as best we could, leaving much of the plastic fragments less than a millimeter behind, here is the quantity of plastic we plucked from just one meter of beach. Wasted energy . . .

The bag on the left is the large items we were able to pull from the sample. The fragments on the right is what we had to use after we filled 18 vials. The vials left of the bowl are all nerdles (pre-production plastics) industry uses, yet Bermuda does not have ANY industry. Clearly brought in by the sea from a far away place.

Energy from plastic comes in other forms as well. When I first learned about the problems with plastics in the marine environment my original thought was a full length documentary, like "An Inconvenient Truth." Of all the environmental issues our oceans are facing, this one is the easiest to fix. It's just going to take some education, legislation, and motivation. First we've got to educate people about the problem, get legislators on board, and motivate people to reduce the use of plastic. My next post will tell you how we got involved with the production of "Plastic Oceans" partially funded by National Geographic and WWF. I had the privilege of rooming with the Producer-Director Jo Ruxton, former underwater videographer from BBCs Blue Planet and she is putting all her energy and several million dollars into a much needed full length documentary.

There's a bit of a water hazard on this one

2010-08-02T17:55:00.000-07:00

One of the draws of being at sea is that you never know what the day will hold; whales, waterspouts or rare fish could be just ahead. Many times, however, the next notable object to float by is manmade.

During a net tow, Pam noticed something floating just ahead of the ship. At first glance it looked just like the flags I see marking the hole on the golf course behind my house, but surely no golf courses have been built at sea, right? It turns out it was a buoy with a pvc pipe attached and a black flag flying on top.

The crew grabbed it as it floated by, and our best guess is that it was a fishing industry marker of some sort. It said “M-FL” - Miami, Florida? If anyone knows anything about this object, we’d love to hear it.

Other large, identifiable items that floated by during the cruise:

A jug, which looked like something that held antifreeze, etc.

A black plastic container for plants.

Please excuse the font and spacing issues. We are working to resolve these.

Posted by Jennifer O'Keefe

Atlantic Plastic Ocean

2010-07-23T18:22:00.000-07:00

Jennifer and I have two very different stories to tell about our trip to the North Atlantic Gyre. Our research took me in one direction and she in another with some overlap.That's what makes us a great team. Jennifer and UNCW's Dr. Pam Seaton worked tirelessly on our open ocean samples.

I worked with various student camps both in the states via Skype and talking to and then demonstrating beach protocols looking for plastics.

I arrived in Bermuda a week in advance so I could survey beaches on Bermuda after last years surveys confirmed that islands inside gyres get pummeled with trash from the continental rim. Like the Hawaiian islands in the North Pacific, one of the most esteemed places on this planet, is riddled with plastic pollution, Bermuda suffers from the same fate. Plastics that are undervalued and over used. Bermuda's geographic location is west of the now known Atlantic garbage accumulation zone publicized by Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummings. Sea Education Association (SEA) out of Woods Hole has been doing researchon plastics in the marine environment in the Atlantic for almost 25 years and confirms Eriksen's and Cummings' finding.
They spent six weeks this summer in and around the said accumulation zone in the middle of the North Atlantic extending south and east of Bermuda. "Some areas may contain up to 500,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer, said scientists from SEA, based in Woods Hole. Such a concentration, the researchers said, would rival that of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean, whose alarming sighting last year highlighted the extent of oceanic pollution and its potential impact on aquatic life."We had the privilege of touring the brigantine after we returned from our cruise July 18th. Much like what Marcus and Anna found in their winter voyage from the Bahamas to Bermuda and then on to the Azores, we found in our samples. In fact, we hit some of the sample sites they hit in January so as to do seasonal comparisons. It will be interesting to see the results. In the meantime, I'll be uploading videos, pictures and tales from our research so keep checking in.

She's Not Heavy, She's Our Trawl

2010-07-12T04:34:00.000-07:00

Bonnie and I have dreamed of a trawl of our very own since we first deployed one borrowed from Marcus Eriksen during a Carolina Ocean Studies cruise in April 2009. We had grand ideas of how to make one out of various materials, but those dreams went out with our plans to get a Sunfish and see what we could find.

A couple years and a whole lot of teamwork later, we are preparing for the maiden voyage of our very own trawl that I’ve nicknamed Manuela. Her frame was constructed at the Center for Marine Science at UNCW, and we owe Gerry, Jay and Dan a huge thank you for the beautiful job they did, as well as their patience for last minute adjustments the day before I left.

Weaver Canvas sewed the net and also helped with last minute tailoring so it would fit like a glove onto the trawl. I squealed into Coleman Supply at 4:55pm on Friday and between the couplings I bought and the salvaged piece of pvc and straps they gave me, we have what we need to connect the net to the codend, where the samples collect.

Manuela is a very large piece of equipment to get onto an airplane. Bonnie said if the trawl didn’t fit in the case she’d borrowed, to call Jason Andre. It didn’t fit. Jason happened to be in a surfboard factory standing next to a very large and very durable cardboard box when I called, and a plan was formed. Thanks to my husband Chris, my #1 Volunteer, the box was crafted into a nice case for Manuela and all of her parts. I can’t forget to thank my best girls Kellie and Kelly for watching my kids while I ran all around town collecting supplies.

I traveled here with Dr. Pam Seaton from UNCW and we wrestled the trawl through 2 airports, on top of a car, in a taxi and on a wheelbarrow. I was so anxious to put her together to make sure everything fit and we had all we needed. A quick trip to the hardware store today and she should be ready to go.

We may not be able to upload photos while at sea, but we'll add photos when we return.

posted by Jennifer O'Keefe

Rooster call

2010-07-10T11:16:00.000-07:00

This is what I'm talking about. There are roosters and chickens everywhere. One of the locals called them the Bermuda rat. I prefer roosters over rats any day, but at 6am? Not so much. For the past 7 days this rooster stood under the my belcony window and belted repeatedly for 30 minutes until I finally got up either to chase it away or shoot it - not with a gun like I would like to but video. It was like a farm out on my patio - two chickens, a chick, two roosters battling for their attention and a stray black cat.

The rooster would be followed by morning beach sampling. Its tough going to these most beautiful beaches and having to work. The slave driver, Dr. Cooper, wouldn't even allow for breaks to jump into the water until the sampling was done. Here we are arguing . . .

It could be worse. It was forecast to rain for 10 days straight and the past two days have been relatively dry. Tomorrow, I'll take you for a ride through Bermuda.

Man of War or War of Man

2010-07-08T17:51:00.000-07:00

Doing beach surveys allow us the opportunity to look at the natural life of the ocean besides the unnatural life of plastic in the ocean. Here we found a Man of War, one that I had the not-so-pleasure of experiencing their sting while out in the Pacific last year. Their tentacles can be up to 30 feet long. They look like a hot dog bun shaped soap bubble or . . . . a piece of plastic wrap. Can you tell the difference? (the one on top is an American cheese wrapper found close by) Many times our sea turtles, like one of the oldest creatures on this planet the Leatherback turtle, mistake plastic wrap for one of their favorite foods - jelly fish. Man of Wars are just one of the many types of jelly fish that they eat. Its a war trying to get these plastics out of the marine environment in order to stop the painful deaths many of our marine life experience from ingesting or getting entangled in our plastics.

Our beach surveys were cut short due to a looming sky that kept us running for cover most of the day. We planned on doing five surveys today. We didn't get to finish one.

We did, however, get the opportunity to meet up with Judie Clee who has been collecting random beach plastic debris for years. She's extremely knowledgeable about the island and the problems with plastics that plague their beaches. Here is her explanation as to why not only plastics are not washing up on their beaches like they do normally (which is a good thing), but why Sargassum hasn't either. "I don’t think there is much stranded stuff anywhere at present. Unfortunately not because there is no plastic garbage out there but because we’ve not had any Sargassum strand recently. We’ve had the cold eddy around the island for months now – resulting in low ocean temperatures and extremely low tides – wonder if this affects the flow of the Sargassum towards us??" To answer her question, Dr. Cooper found the feasibility of this explanation. "If indeed Bermuda is in the middle of a cold water ring, its possible that the surface currents are shut off or are reduced and its the currents that are one of the driving forces that send Sargassum and plastic jetsam on to gyre beaches."

For me, I want to believe that the other reason why we aren't seeing as much is because people are starting to get it. They're reducing their use of plastic and it is beginning to show in the quantities of plastic on Bermuda. I may be being naive, but what if . . . .

As Charlie Moore would ask, what is your plastic footprint?

Presentations and Plastic Beaches

2010-07-07T17:04:00.000-07:00

I finished my second presentation 16 hours after my first here in Bermuda. One at 4pm was at the Wrightsville Beach Surf Camp - Sea Turtle Camp to be exact. I Skyped from Bermuda to Wilmington NC, used a PowerPoint that included videos and the students in Wilmington saw the entire presentation with Q and A following without a hitch. Amazing. The second one was with students from the BIOS (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences) Camp that is usually a combination of private school students and scholarship public school students. JP Skinner heads up the camp and what an opportunity for these students to participate with one of the finest marine research facilities in the Atlantic. I was honored to speak to these savvy kids. They asked great questions after Dr. Bill Cooper and I lectured for over an hour.

After the lecture and a free lunch we headed to John Smith Bay where we saw a very different beach than we witnessed a year ago. Last year, it was full of Sargassum and mixed in this surfaced dwelling weed were micro plastics that Jennifer O'Keefe pawed through showing us how it serves as a dust mop collecting micro plastics and washing them up on the beach. This time, there was little Sargassum, but what we did find was much like what we find out in the North Pacific Garbage Patch, photo degraded fragments that the ocean spit out on the island inside the gyre boundries. Here is a video that shows just what we saw today all along the wrack line. We don't see this so much, if at all, in North Carolina because the Gulf Stream protects us from micro plastics, in the gyre, and keeps it from washing up on our beaches. But as the volume of plastics in our oceans goes up, so does the possibility of what is happening to Bermuda's beaches will happen on ours and many other beaches.

Bermudian Life

2010-07-05T08:28:00.000-07:00

Day one in Bermuda did not fare so well. I'm punning. Note to self, always, always, always check the name on your suitcase before you put it in a Taxi that costs $30 to go 3 miles. Bermuda is not cheap especially in taxi fare. I realized I grabbed the wrong bag 24 hours after being here. My suitcase that contained all my research supplies also had one pair of sandals that I luckily decided to wear yesterday morning. Had I waited six more hours, I would have missed the opportunity to return the bag. The reason? The person it belonged to was on a cruise from Bermuda to the Caribbean and it was leaving at 4pm.

I grabbed the suitcase and brought it back to the airport hoping that it would be the end of the ordeal. My bag was still there and the only way I could get it back was to return the bag to the rightful owner which meant taking a taxi from one end of the island to the other.
Ten minutes into our journey, the cabby pointed out the ships off in the distance. I thought to myself, "Okay $25 there, $25 back, $60 with the tip I can handle that." Fifteen minutes later he said, "Okay, we're half way there." The meter rolled in tandom with my stomach.

The cabby knew I was getting sicker by the second so he started giving me the history of the island, pointing out significant details to the landscape, how Bermudians work together on the island to keep drugs out, how they fine people for not taking care of their property, and how they keep poverty at a bare minimum. "Everyone has the opportunity to work." he said. If they lose their job, there are programs that help people find a job that works for them. They provide training until they find a skill." There are 62,000 Bermudians on the island. One car per family. And all cars are regulated with chips that provide inspection and registration information. There are inconspicuous stations on the road that detect the sensors to ensure nothing is past due. It was important to him to keep mentioning no stray cats or dogs. About every 10 miles he'd mention it. What he didn't mention was the stray chickens and roosters.

Roosters that crow starting at 4am. One serenaded me around 6am and didn't stop until the neighbors came out to shew it away. They are loud. One is crowing right now off in the distance.

I crowed when I had to hand over $195 for my round trip to the airport, to the dockyard and back to the hotel. But in such a beautiful place, its difficult to stay upset for long.

Tomorrow we begin our beach surveys stay tuned.

Back into the N. Atlantic Gyre

2010-06-17T20:46:00.000-07:00

It's been almost a year since Jennifer O'Keefe and I hopped a ship of opportunity (BIOS Atlantic Explorer) out into the Atlantic 700 miles off the coast of Wilmington. What we found in our samples emulated that which is found in the N. Pacific Garbage Patch. Small fragments of photo-degraded plastics, bite size for the small marine life that live in the Sargassum. We also witnessed Michael Gonsior release a trapped six inch trigger fish from, of all things, a motor oil bottle. And then there was the 12 foot radar that could have done damage to our ship or sank a small vessel if we hadn't removed it from the open ocean. It took over an hour, but we were able to retrieve the 200+ lbs. marine debris. Large objects, like this one, are able to float due to airtight plastic housings.

We'll be back at it again starting July 3rd. Check in to see what we find! And thanks goes out to people like AAron and Danielle Richardet who have not only helped promote our work, but have financially supported us as well. Kudos Richardet family!

Pluckin' Plastic

2010-06-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

That's what I'll be talking about at Bonnaroo. Representing Algalita Marine Research Foundation, I'll be discussing the plastic and oil cocktail our oceans are O.D.ing on and what we can do to help the detox efforts.

Petroleum is killing our oceans on many fronts - through our burning fossil fuels causing ocean acidification, oil that spills into our oceans daily (scores of rigs and ships spill on top of the slow motion disaster in the Gulf), and then there's the 27 million lbs of plastic (which is made out of oil) that enters our oceans daily. All of which kills sea life from phytoplankton to coral to several ton whales. This should give you some idea why I've been out to the North Atlantic and North Pacific "pluckin'" plastic. Day in day out, 27 million lbs. of discarded plastics enter our oceans.

I'll be in Bonnaroo talking about how we plucked plastic from two ocean gyres.You can pluck the plastic too by refusing it every chance you can and when you do, you tell the oil companies you don't want their oil. Less demand, less reason to be drilling. Pluck plastic.

My venues at Bonnaroo:June 12 - Rock the Earth Panel Discussion "Social Change through Music" Solar Stage 1-230 and Cinema Tent Q and A with Ryan Stasik 2:30-4:30.

Hope to see you there.

Sun Chip Halfway Mark

2010-06-08T07:39:00.001-07:00

Today marks 7 weeks of Sun Chip composting, so we're halfway there! It's been ripped a few times while I turned the compost and it now looks like there are two layers that are separating, one is clear and one is more like foil. I fished it out for the photo, then tucked it back in the middle of the pile where it is smokin' hot.

posted by Jennifer O'Keefe

Black Liquid Plastic Spilling into Our Ocean

2010-05-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

(photo by Chris Jordan)

Another good reason why we should reduce our use of plastic. Many people do not know that plastic is made out of petroleum and natural gas. So when you think about the oil spilling in the Gulf of Mexico, think about that oil's potential to have been used to make plastic. Then take it one step further and think about how much plastic ends up in our oceans as well as the amount of oil from this spill. The numbers are staggering.

In 1997, the US Academy of Sciences estimated the total input of marine litter into the oceans, worldwide, at approximately 6.4 million tons per year and that was 13 years ago when the population was smaller. More people, more plastic. 80% of marine debris is reported to be plastics, says Mark Murray, executive director of Californians Against Waste. So an estimated total of 5.2 million tons of plastic spill into our ocean each year. This averages out to be roughly 27 million lbs of plastic entering our oceans daily. BP's skimpy estimation of 210,000 gallons equals 1.4 million lbs daily. Of course, we all know that BP's estimation is askew and the number is much higher. But even if oil is spewing out 10 times faster it still doesn't equal in poundage the rate of plastic. Now I know that oil in water is an even worse mix than plastic, but plastic is entering our oceans faster than this oil spill.

According to the US Dept of Energy, only 4.6 percent of our oil consumption is used to manufacture plastic, not a big number right? The truth is it is roughly 331 million BARRELS of petroleum. That equals 13,902,000,000 gallons of oil, just in plastic in the US. Hmmmm. Imagine if we could reduce our use of plastic to the point that we don't need as many oil rigs.

According to California Coastal Commission, plastic marine debris affects at least 267 species worldwide, including 86 percent of all sea turtle species, 44 percent of all sea bird species, and 43 percent of marine mammal species. Imagine these species contending with yet another petroleum pollutant - trying to swim through toxic oil.

So if we kick our plastic dependency, we just might reduce the demand for oil in yet another way. And, at the same time, protect our oceans.

Sun Chip bag update

2010-05-11T17:41:00.001-07:00

It's been about 3 weeks since the Sun Chip bag went into the compost bin.

Today I stirred the compost, pulled the bag out for this photo, then tucked it back into the hottest part. It looks a little withered but nothing major.

Posted by Jennifer O'Keefe

Yes, we're composting the new Sun Chips bags

2010-04-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, some one brought a bag of Sun Chips to a friend’s birthday party. The new bags, as you probably have heard, are labeled as compostable.

I've tried composting items labeled as biodegradable or compostable many times, including the misguided attempt to compost hundreds of beer cups from the local Earth Day festival a few years ago. Smaller quantities and thinner items work much better so I took the bag home for another backyard science experiment.

The bag went in on April 20. Since then, it’s ripped once and it’s starting to look a little withered.

I’ll add pictures/updates as the bag changes.

You've Come a long Way Baby

2010-04-26T11:33:00.001-07:00

Segwey kissing James Dean. Segway is the sea lion we reported on in October that almost died from one stand of fishing line wrapped around her throat. Due to infection and starvation - too weak to find food she nearly died. Its people that can change the fate of our environment and the lives of the other creatures that share it that saved her life. She will be scarred for life, but her recent release back into the ocean serves as an example of people doing the right thing DOES make a difference.

Happy Earth Day

2010-04-21T19:08:00.000-07:00

Bonnie sent me a link to a video by www.seejanerun.com Looks like a cool site. Her Earth Day post gave me a new favorite quote from Capt. Charlie Moore.

He said, "Refuse that plastic junk. I mean, it's just going to break and make you pissed off anyway."

Happy Earth Day everybody.

posted by Jennifer O'Keefe

Birthday and Earth Day

2010-04-18T08:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a week for Plastic Ocean. I presented at Tara Theatre in Litchfield, South Carolina on my birthday talking to 220 people of all ages about my experiences in both the North Atlantic and North Pacific gyres and the negative impact of plastic to the marine environment. Thank you Goffinet and Ian McLaren for pulling this event together. My favorite part of giving talks is the Q and A and this group didn't disappoint. One woman stood up and said she had been carrying her own reusable bag around for 25 years because "It starts with me." The audience gave her a round of applause. It was one of those defining moments when someone does something for the betterment of the masses but never gets a voice - those that lead by example. Her sharing this to a large audience deserved a loud and long applause. I laughed a little inside at the synchronicity of that statement because that same week, I learned of a blog http://itstartswithme-danielle.blogspot.com/2010/04/teach-them-better.html and how apropos that this one line had been honored. My husband used to rant how our magazine titles went from "Life" to "People" to "Us" to "Self" and he felt it was what had been the breakdown in our culture, the lost sense of community. "It starts with me" is a turning point in looking at our selves and how our actions effect not only each other but the world in which we rely on and live in.

Earth Day at Hugh McRae Park in Wilmington, NC brought a huge crowd of 5,000 people. Jennifer O'Keefe and myself had a "Plastic Ocean Project" table amassing the many problems plastics create in the marine environement using pictures of marine life maimed, trapped or died from misguided plastics in the ocean. We had items that we pulled from each gyre -one being the actual bottle we found and freed a fish trapped inside. Other items were samples collected that illustrates plastics fragment making it difficult to go out into these gyres and scoop the plastics out. Our images and display drew a crowd. It was a great opportunity to share and educate -thanks Shannon Culpepper! And my sister Linda Hall who I bamboozled to come to the beach only to put her to work with outreach to this enormous issue. (Pictures by Lloyd Mackall)

Thank you American Association for University Women

2010-04-11T07:32:00.000-07:00

I had the privilege to speak about The Plastic Ocean Project to the Wilmington chapter of AAUW yesterday. We had a room full of savvy women of all different ages. What I've noticed from the numerous presentations I have given on my personal experience out in the North Pacific Garbage Patch and the North Atlantic is that people are genuinely very concerned about the problems with plastic in the marine environment. Inevitably, at the end, there is always a lot of discussion about solutions. One question was about the biodegradable plastics being produced now and I explained that there are a few concerns about biodegradable plastics. Not that its a bad idea, but like our FDA has hastily approved so many products that have had to be removed from shelves later, we just don't know about the chemical implications. Another problem is, some people will think, "It's biodegradable so I can throw it on the ground." And lastly, the biodegradable plastic water bottles, for example, end up getting into the recyclable ones and degrade the quality of the recycled materials. Here is a video that can give you some ideas on how to reduce, reduce, reduce your use of plastic. BECAUSE that really is the best sollution!

Reduce Reuse Reduce from J Sun Productions on Vimeo.

OLLI - We Can All Learn From Each Other

2010-03-13T07:54:00.000-08:00

Osher Lifelong Learning Institute is exactly that. I presented "Unwanted Gifts from the Sea" to an audience of mostly seniors citizens - bright eyed and astute. We swept through my near hour long visuals of plastic debris taken from two gyres. I shared many photos as well as videos. Most of those significant items were on display disguised as gifts on a table that set before me. The group then came up to the table where the child curiosity took over and they examined with reverence. We then had Q and A for over an hour. Here is where it got really interesting. As I taught them - they taught me. I had to post some of the comments and questions because we all learn from each other and these are the highlights from those that often aren't heard, but have a lot to say and are well worth listening to - our elders.

Comment-We put a lot of emphasis on educating our youth about the problem with plastic over-use and improper disposal, but its the baby boomers who are the growing population. We are the ones that need to stop saying, "we're too old to change our habits." We need to reduce our use of plastic.

Question-How do we get the bottle bill in our state of North Carolina? My response - "There are 11 states in our country that have the bottle bill. The retail lobby groups have made sure it has NOT gone to number 12. We, the constituents, have to join together and push it through. NOTHING changes from the top down. Change starts from the grassroots up!

Comment-We were the ones that started this. We went from using wax paper to wrap our meats to plastic wrap and Styrofoam. Our generation created the plastic bags to replace paper, Styrofoam for eggs instead of baskets. Maybe we need to figure out a way to go back to the old way of doing things. My comment: the original idea of plastic bags was to reduce the number of trees being cut down, now we know we can use other resources, like bamboo, that regenerates at a much faster rate and can be transformed into many useful products that can replace plastic. We can use reusable bags instead of plastic bags.

Question-I use plastic bags I bring my groceries home in and then use them in my garbage pail so I don't have to buy bags. My comment-So you are recycling in a sense/reusing to avoid buying more - that's smart. What we need are biodegradable bags.

Comment-The term biodegradable is often times misleading. Not enough studies are being done on products that claim to be biodegradable. Even newspapers that ARE biodegradable were found in the bottom of a NY landfill - 30 years old yet in good shape and legible. Without the right environment for bio degradation to occur, it is moot.

Question-How do we get big cities like NYC to stop dumping its trash into the Atlantic? They cruise out 70 miles and dump their garbage into International Waters. My comment: If it's true, it takes people like you and me willing to start a ground swell that gets to our politicians that this is unacceptable. To create a movement against it requires outreach. First people have to be aware there is a problem for them to want to do something about it.

I started my campaign to educate people about the issues of plastic in the marine environment because I inadvertently learned about the problem. It disturbed me into action. It's going to take a whole lot of us to join together and make our voices heard saying "STOP trashing our marine environment." And its going to take people of all ages to make that change. Do I hear any volunteers? Start by talking about this issue to your friends and educate each other on habits you can change that will help reduce the use of plastic, to dispose of it properly (not out car windows!) and reduce the accumulation of trash where it doesn't belong.

Great session Osher - we need more programs like yours!

The World Is A Town . . .

2010-03-03T05:30:00.000-08:00

. . that is what my husband would say when we would travel and see the similarities in people, places, and things that resembled home. After reading the 5gyres.org blog I can say that about plastic in the marine environment. When Jennifer O'Keefe and I voyaged the Atlantic last summer looking for plastics we witnessed a fish trapped in a bottle - so did Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins on their recent voyage out into the Atlantic. When Jennifer and I were in Bermuda, we surveyed the shores and concluded that islands in gyres must accumulate wayward trash from plastic concentration zones in gyres. I made the same observation in Hawaii. Marcus and Anna found the same occurance on both Bermuda's and the Azores' beaches. When I was in the North Pacific Garbage Patch, I pulled a toilet seat out of the ocean, Anna found one on the Azore shores. Global, this problem is global and we all need to do our part to prevent more of this plastic entering our oceans that end up trashing the locations many people look to for vacation, relaxation, and beauty - our islands. Check out these three videos and see for yourself.

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Dumped Beach Azores from 5 Gyres on Vimeo.

Message in the Waves on Planet Green

2010-02-25T06:12:00.000-08:00

Message in the Waves is a must-see. http://www.messageinthewaves.com/xtras.php?clip=whatdo.flv&preview=7&start=true Here's a link to the website about the movie.

Posted by Jennifer O'Keefe

Ocean Sciences Conference - A Mind Bender

2010-02-24T16:15:00.001-08:00

Dazzled! Completely awed by what I learned today at the Ocean Sciences Conference in Portland, Oregon. I presented with the forerunners of plastic pollution research in the North Atlantic to date done by Sea Education Association. Check out their website and SEA how they combine undergraduate education with open ocean field studies. They have data as far back as 1987 and sailed one million nautical miles. Though not published, yet, their papers are going to rock.

Among others, I learned about quantitative analysis of the plastic accumulation currently taking place on Midway Atoll. Seba Sheavly 's presentation discussed the amount of plastic debris that washes up on one of the most remote islands in the world and yet it is shrouded with plastic pollution. Her data sets point to land-based sources as the culprit from the Pacific Continental Rim followed by mariners. We also got to hear from Miriam Goldstein from SCRIPPS as well as world reknown Hideshige Takada who is studying the Persistant Organic Polluted absorbed by plastics in the marine environment and the implications of it then entering the food chain.

Dr. J. Baker from NOAA kicked off our session setting the bar super high providing an overview of not only where NOAA has been in researching the issues of plastic in the marine environment, but providing details as to why it is important. There were no nappers in this session. I, of course, topped the meeting off by talking about the outreach component of blogging from sea. What good is all this science if there isn't the outreach component to connect science to the general public, right?

Great news for those who enjoy the Sun . . .

2010-02-13T21:29:00.000-08:00

. . . but hate putting harmful chemicals in the ocean from sunscreens. It has been reported that sunscreens may play a role in the deterioration of the coral reefs. Well here's a bit of good news -tropicalSeas has developed not only a biodegradable sun screen claiming not to harm the coral reefs, but it comes in a 100% recyclable plastic applicator - from top to bottom. Nice to have some good news to share! We can promote the proactive companies that produce these environmental-friendly products by sharing this info and making sure we buy them even if they cost a little extra. Save your skin while saving the planet, we're worth it.

Photo Lindsey Hoshaw N. Pacific Garbage Patch

As I Witnessed in the North Pacific 3,460 Nautical Miles

2010-02-06T06:39:00.000-08:00

In 1958, Don MacFarland and a group of friends made a raft and sailed from California to Hawaii. In 2008, Marcus Eriksen and Joel Pascal did the same. This video describes the drastic difference in their experiences. In the end, we are removing the fish by over fishing and replacing them with plastic. Not to mention, plastics put an added strain on the marine life populations due to entanglement and ingestion of plastics that often lead to slow painful deaths.

One of the most surprising things to me while we were out at sea for a month was the lack of marine life. I didn't see ANY sea turtles, whales, dolphins, sharks or schools of fish. The only time I saw fish was when there was a large plastic item in the ocean like ghostnets or barrels. Think about that, a month at sea and I didn't see hardly any fish and not one marine mammal. Watching this video made me realize what I experienced may be a sign of a sea change.

Research into the Atlantic Continues with 5gyres.org

2010-02-04T22:12:00.000-08:00

It's been less than a year since Jennifer O'Keefe and I reported the accumulation of marine debris and the plastics with bite marks found on Bermuda's beaches as well as the plastic particles that we found in the Atlantic trawls like what was found in the Pacific Garbage Patch. Now, Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins with Algalita Marine Research Foundation as well as Joel Pascal (JUNK) have taken on this research to bring awareness that confirms our finding with the BIOS cruise from last July.

This crew aboard the Sea Dragon is taking it one step further and sailing from Bermuda to the Azores in attempt to locate the accumulation zone in the Atlantic like what Captain Moore located in the Pacific.

With the appropriate funding, we hope to retrace their steps to this possible accumulation zone to compare their finding from this winter cruise to our summer '10 cruise. Follow their several blogs on the link below. Its packed with their findings. For example, on the 5gyre.org blog you'll find possible evidence that one of the most pelagic fish in all our oceans, the trigger fish that feed the larger fish in the food chain, (the fish we eat) may be eating our plastic.

http://www.panexplore.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=136&Itemid=194

Agalita and 5gyres.org will be on Good Morning America

2010-02-02T17:39:00.000-08:00

Watch Good Morning America tomorrow morning (Wed. Feb. 3) to be brought up to date on the 5 Gyres Project and Algalita's recent research on plastic pollution.

Please check your local listings for more information.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/

Way to go Algalita, Marcus Erikson, and Anna Cummins!

This plastic pollution in the ocean is no simple matter.

2010-01-28T19:05:00.000-08:00

It’s easy to blame a certain industry or group for these problems but if we were honest with ourselves, we’d recognize that many more groups than we might like to acknowledge contribute. And one contributing party might be looking us in the mirror each morning.

I saw two things this week that reinforced the idea that marine debris is caused by more sources than we’d like to imagine. There are also easy solutions, though we have to start with acknowledging the problem.

Surfrider Foundation sends out a weekly newsletter and their last one said that 7 whales have washed up on the coast of Italy recently, and they died because they ingested plastic bags, among other things.

I picked up 3 bags on the two block journey from my house to the bus stop. Do you know how big whales are? They’re BIG. Like the size of a school bus big. I bring my own grocery bags regularly but I still use garbage bags for the non-recyclable or non-compostable items I have, and I had 2 large clear plastic bags that held recyclables from a recent work-related event to dispose of. Plastic bags and plastic film of all varieties are everywhere. The more we can reduce our use of them, the less chance there is that our plastic bags will end up killing a whale. A 13 ton whale. Talk about ego to use something so briefly that can kill such a large and magnificent creature.

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2009/12/18/Beached-whales-killed-by-ingesting-plastic/UPI-47351261152108/

The second thing is a forwarded blog entry from my girl Danielle. I’ve noticed that participants during local and televised international cycling events, marathons, half-marathons, etc., take cups of water, energy drinks, or now these funky energy gels from volunteers. What happens to these items? They get tossed on the side of the road. In my dreams, the race committee has a clean up crew to pick up this waste. The link below is a blog entry that shows that this stuff doesn’t magically disappear.

http://iwriteitinajournal.blogspot.com/

The lesson here is to use less stuff, pick up after yourself, and for pete’s sake, if you see a piece of litter, pick it up.

Jennifer O'Keefe

If you wondered how plastics get out to the middle of the ocean

2010-01-24T12:00:00.000-08:00

Check out this video. Research shows that 80% of plastic in the marine environment is from land-base sources. Watch this video then calculate how many storm drains there are in the world and you can quickly figure out how much our one time use items contribute to the plastic pollution in the ocean gyres.

Charlie Moore at UNCW Presentation Huge Turnout

2010-01-20T10:06:00.000-08:00

We had to turn people away as the Lumina Theatre with its 360 seats were not enough. With only two weeks to promote this event, it speaks volumes about all walks of life who care about this planet. I saw children under the age of 10, high school students, college students, the sea turtle community, the elderly, faculty and staff with eyes wide open as Captain Moore shared his finding on the maladies of plastic in the marine environment. I'm confident, not one person walked away without now second guessing their use of plastics. Bravo Charlie. Thank you Jennifer from Keep America Beautiful of New Hanover County, Surfrider, UNCW ECO, and the good folks from South Carolina, Lloyd Mackall, Goffinet and Ian McLaren.

Captain Moore Gains Media Coverage while Lecturing on the East Coast

2010-01-10T07:35:00.000-08:00

Captain Moore spoke on Maine's Public Radio this week after being on Colbert Nation Tuesday 1/6/10 and presenting at the MERI Ocean Environment Lecture Series in Maine on 1/8/10.

The Captain has a full dance card while traveling up and down the east coast lecturing. He will be at it again on 1/11/10 at the Beacon Academy Lecture Series. On January 12th, he will present at the Marine Science Center at Northeastern University Nahant, Massachusetts. Last, but not least, the Captain will be at UNCWilmington presenting in the Lumina Theatre, Student Fisher Center on the university campus. A scientific poster session will pregame his lecture. All are free and open to the public so go and find yourself a seat!

Captain Moore took on Stephen Colbert

2010-01-07T11:22:00.000-08:00

Captain Charlie Moore defended our oceans on Comedy Central and won. Great job Charlie. Thank you Stephen Colbert for letting Charlie loose!

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Charles Moore

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Economy

Captain Moore Will Air on Colbert Report tonight

2010-01-06T04:49:00.000-08:00

Make sure you watch the Colbert Nation tonight 1/6/10 at 11:00 on Comedy Central. Charlie Moore from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation will be talking about his 10 year anniversary of studying plastic pollution in the marine environment as well as his 10,000 nautical mile research cruise in the North Pacific this summer. I was fortunate enough to be there for 3,460 NM of it. If you love the ocean, you will love Charlie Moore and his mission.
http://www.colbertnation.com/home

Also, Charlie Moore will be presenting at UNC Wilmington 8pm Thursday, 1/14/10 at the Lumina Theatre in the Fisher Student Center free and open to the public.

Funniest Find in the North Pacific Gyre

2010-01-03T18:11:00.000-08:00

I've been doing a lot of editing from my 20 hours of footage from the North Pacific Garbage Patch. The video I have selected is from our being about 1200 miles from Hawaii and even further from any other land mass. I had been playing a game trying to pluck 10 large objects from the the ocean while traveling at 3 knots in choppy seas. Many things floated by but they had to be in reach of a handheld fish net in order to attempt to pull them out. The task takes timing as well as strength depending on (1)how many feet in the air the boat is launched from the wave action and (2)the size of the object being retrieved.

My chance to pull item number 10 within one hour came after I had asked the ocean to send me something different, something really interesting, something that would catch a viewer's attention. By the time I pulled it out I remember saying to myself, "And she has a sense of humor." I think the ocean is trying to tell us something. The item may reference how she feels we are treating her. What do you think?

It's offical - Captain Moore will Present in Wilmington, NC

2009-12-18T18:22:00.000-08:00

That's right! Captain Charlie Moore, from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, is going to present at University of North Carolina Wilmington on January 14th at 8pm at Lumina theatre. Captain Moore is the crusader who brought worldwide awareness to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. He has the longest continuous research on plastic accumulation in the North Pacific gyre and logged 10,000 nautical miles this past summer of which I was there for 3,400 miles of it! I'll keep you posted as it unfolds.

What's with the bottle and can counter?

2009-11-20T22:30:00.001-08:00

Check out the bottle counter on the right. It represents the number of bottles NOT going to recycling. They are going in a landfill, on the ground, into our waterways and/or out to our oceans. When I was out in both the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans, plastic drink bottles were the most recognizable item in the seas. Plastics that could be used to make polyester for clothing as well as carpeting. It's as much a resource as coal, petroleum oil, and electricity. Did I say electricity? Yes, burning plastics that cannot be recycled is another way we can reuse plastics. Bermuda, an island that has exhausted its landfills, burns trash for energy. Although it has CO2 emissions, it is no worse than burning coal and in many newer incinerators, like the one in Wilmington, NC, they can burn much cleaner than coal. So do the right thing, put your recycliables in the bin and help slow down the counter on the right, and help make something out of one time use plastics!

To learn more: http://www.ncconservationnetwork.org/mainblog/2009/06/03/plastic-bottles-must-be-recycled-in-nc

Links

2009-11-18T17:53:00.000-08:00

Please forgive the brain purge. I've seen a lot of information that I'd like to share somewhere, and I hope you find this useful in your thoughts and conversations.

The UK has launched a new site as a forum to discuss a lot of marine debris and plastic issues. We don't have a lot of answers, so this is a great way to see what others are thinking across the pond. View the Plastics 2020 Challenge

Sea turtles are eating our plastic. See information from Australia here. Their preliminary studies indicate that more than 35% of the sea turtles studied died from eating trash.

A different view of marine debris, also from Australia, can be found here. Turtles aren't the only ones that are impacted by marine debris.

Bonnie found this video a couple weeks ago, and I keep marking the email she sent with the link as "unread" so I could find it. Some fish are found in bottles, some bottles are found in fish. Either way, it's not pretty.

International Coastal Cleanup photos

2009-11-18T11:48:00.000-08:00

I love the International Coastal Cleanup. They have Flickr account so participants can upload their photos from the event. This set is from the Dominican Republic. Take a minute to watch the slide show. It's impressive.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bracuta/sets/72157622299794959/show/

-posted by Jennifer

What BBC and I have in Common

2009-11-14T15:17:00.000-08:00

One of the beaches I visited while in Hawaii and later wrote about is Kamilo Bay, Hawaii. A BBC film crew had been led down to this beach just like I had been by Noni and Ron Stanford. What I was told, the producer broke down when seeing it. It, too, made my knees weak to see this remote beach covered in everyday use plastics and fishing gear. Imagine the esteemed beautiful beaches in Hawaii getting pummeled with plastic trash. As Captain Moore states it comes in from the Pacific Rim meaning from all the continents that surround the Pacific. I saw it with my own eye. Items from Japan, Korea, China, Canada, and the US, to name a few, littered the beach and that's only the recognizable stuff. Broken fragments visibly washed in with each wave.

Here's the thing. Of all the problems the ocean is experiencing right now this is the one with the easiest fix. Use less plastic, reuse plastic items you already bought and buy stuff that doesn't come in plastic like a bar of soap instead of body wash in a plastic bottle. It's a start! Oh and everyday, just pick up one piece of trash that isn't yours. It'll make you feel good.

More on Segway the Sea Lion Fishing Line scar(f)

2009-11-04T02:25:00.000-08:00

On October 9, 2009, I witnessed treatment given to a sea lion named Segway at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center in California. Segway was found with one strand of monofilament (fishing line) around her neck. She was not sedated, only local antisteshia was applied. Even though she was a wild animal, she must have known the good people at the Pacific Marine Mammal Center were there to help her because she didn't put up a big fight though out the 30 minute procedure. It might also have been because she was just too week to eat. Her body weight was well below normal. She was starving to death due to her injury.

I received word yesterday that she is doing fine, but that it had been touch and go for a lot longer than expected. One strand of fishing line created a gash in this yearlings neck several inches wide and deep. Check out the video and if this doesn't change peoples thinking about ridiculously durable plastics, I don't know what can. To learn more about Segway and the center http://www.pacificmmc.org/

Fishing is somewhat primal but . . .

2009-11-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

whqr: : Gillnets (2009-11-02)
does it have to be so destructive? Listen to the WHQR audio and learn how change can do some good. Below is a list of actual occurences of damage done by nets just this week to sea turtles. There were 18 strandings reported last week (only one live) that may or may not be associated, but these 4 incidental captures are:

GREEN Date:OCT/29 ALIVE DARE COUNTY INSHORE in Pamlico Sound near Frisco. Caught in 5.5" mesh gill net, was released.

KEMP'S RIDLEY Date:OCT/27 ALIVE HYDE COUNTY INSHORE in Pamlico Sound near Ocracoke. Caught in pound net, not entangled. Plastron fractures, now at Topsail Turtle Hospital.

KEMP'S RIDLEY Date:OCT/27 ALIVE HYDE COUNTY INSHORE in Pamlico Sound near Ocracoke. Caught in pound net, not entangled. Skull fractures, now at Topsail Turtle Hospital.

LOGGERHEAD Date:OCT/27 ALIVE HYDE COUNTY INSHORE in Pamlico Sound near Ocracoke. Caught in pound net, not entangled. Boat prop wounds, now at Topsail Turtle Hospital

Here is why it matters check out this video.

Another Plastic Bag Car Launch

2009-10-30T16:12:00.001-07:00

Fascinating to me is how unconscionable some people are about throwing trash out their car window. Second time in a week I had to stop and wait for traffic to pass so I could pick up the abandoned bag that was launched out of a car window This one ended up being blown into an area on Kerr Ave where many other unwanted one-time use items have landed. Until we put a value on this one-time use trash, people are going to continue to launch it anyway, anywhere, anyhow. What is tragic is often times there is still some food substances on these items and little critters go out in the road to check it out and then BAM.

So if you know of anyone that is a trash launcher can you asked them not to do it? Even food that will biodegrade is a problem for animals looking for a bite to eat. It could be their last.

Bags under my eyes

2009-10-27T20:52:00.000-07:00

Lately, there have been a lot of plastic bags crossing my patch. Last week, I was talking to my son on the phone when I saw one launched out a car window. It went straight up in the air like a hot air balloon, then floated down only to dodge traffic. Even though I was enjoying my conversation with my son who is off to grad school, I had to hang up. He wanted to know what was the matter and laughed when I told him it was because of a plastic bag let loose on the street, right near a storm drain. His laughing doesn't bother me because I know, deep down, he appreciates my willingness to stop on my bike to go pick it up.

In 2007, we used 60,000 plastic bags every 5 seconds in the US alone. That's 720,000 every minute. There ya go, now I know why they've been floating around on the streets. OMG, imagine how much more it might be today if people didn't start bringing their own to the store. Awesome people!

Plastic Trashed Yearling Sea Lion

2009-10-18T23:33:00.000-07:00

(Kamilo Bay Hawaii -Photo by Ron Sanford) Over the past year I've been compelled to educate people about the issues of plastic pollution in the ocean or anywhere for that matter. That urge has not subsided since I returned from the Big Island of Oaho Hawaii. What I witnessed there should never happen. The beach does not have sand, it has plastic confetti. I fear without any relief from our one time use plastics nor a reduced amount of plastic litter on our roadsides, we will have to get used to plastic integrating into our sand and soil. And as humans many of us can probably deal with it okay. But its the ones that don't use plastic that are most inflicted by it.

When I returned from the North Pacific Garbage Patch, I had one more item on my wish list. I wanted to go to the Pacific Marine Mammal Center to talk to them about the impact of plastics on marine animals. No one had to say a word, what I saw spoke volumes. I witnessed a rescued yearling sea lion that nearly died because it had just one strand of fishing line around its neck. One line cut into this sea lion's neck a few inches laying open the skin all the way around her neck. Nothing should have to suffer this way. Nothing. Fortunately for her there are programs out there that try to protect as well as rehabilitate unfortunate animals like this one. The kick is she was swimming where she belongs amongst such things that do not belong. These plastics, like fishing line, don't degrade fast enough and are so durable it takes years for it to weaken enough to break, by then animals entangled have expired. If you would like to learn more about "Segway" and the wonderful people that helped her check out http://www.pacificmmc.org/patients.php and tell them thanks for me.

What do plastics and cockroaches have in common?

2009-10-14T18:49:00.001-07:00

When I was in college my entomology professor said, “If bugs are your friends, you will never be alone.” That has gotten me through many a bug infestation, and I’m seeing something similar with trash. No matter where I go, trash and litter seem to be right there with me.

I went to the grocery store yesterday with Quinn, my four year old son. I carried him across the parking lot, and when we almost into the store he said “Mommy! Litter!”

Litter is so prevalent that I have to prioritize which pieces of litter I pick up so I don’t die or cause accidents. Plastics are a top priority to pick up. Paper products are lower on the list. Litter in a busy parking lot is further down on the list because the safety of my small children has to come first.

Quinn had spotted a paper bag that had been decorated to look like a pumpkin, and it was pretty far away. I told him we'd get it on the way back because we’d pass right back by it, and it really looked as if someone might have forgotten it. He said, and I kid you not, "If Ms. Bonnie were here, she would pick it up."

I guess I’ve taught him well.

We turned around, walked back across the parking lot, and picked up the paper bag, which was crudely painted to look like a pumpkin and had a paper leaf attached.

We finished our shopping and where checking out when the cashier offered Quinn a cookie. I told her we were in the store about 4 seconds before he hit the cookie bin so he was all set. Then she asked another cashier to get a balloon for him – she was really going out of her way to be nice to us - but I had to tell her that I don't take balloons. She looked a little off, and said, "Oh, sorry." I told her I really appreciated the thought, but I have seen and plucked too many balloons and balloon strings from the ocean. She looked surprised, and said how she tries to be green and she'd never thought of that before. She’d never seen the impacts of her very sweet and completely well intentioned offerings of balloons. But they are a real problem; I’ve seen them washing in here in North Carolina and in Bermuda. We saw balloon parts in the North Atlantic Gyre, and Bonnie saw the balloons that were found in the stomach of a sea lion. It’s no trivial matter, these balloons.

When we’d finished checking out, I had to explain the paper bag pumpkin that was in the cart. We have recycled the paper bag and the newspaper stuffed inside.

Trash is everywhere. Sometimes, it can turn into a meaningful experience for everyone involved.

If trash is your game, you never have to look to far to make a difference.

The Warm Welcome Home

2009-10-07T23:06:00.000-07:00

Thank you Algalita and friends for the warm welcome home. Marieta Francis and Jeanne Gallagher - you two were a sight for sore eyes. Along with many others including Jeff's parents, Kent and Kathy Ernst. The last few miles in, I sat on the bow ready to video any sea lions or dolphins sightings so I could send a picture back to Vicki Rivenbark's class at Holly Tree School back in Wilmington, NC. The only thing we saw as we neared Alamitos Bay was plastic trash making its way out to sea as we headed in. Things like Styrofoam containers, chip bags, bottles, and even a soccerball accompanied by a bottle. But the most disturbing was actually witnessing a seagull pecking at a floating plastic bag. "It looked like we were back in the gyre." Lindsey turned to me and said, "This is where it all starts."

Thank goodness the Algalita supporters where out there to distract us. It was all too overwhelming to see so much trash in its origin - land. It played out like a scene in "The Twilight Zone." I, personally, felt like our trip out into the gyre was some kind of victory, only to return to business as usual. The jaded twist to the end of our journey.

It's going to take a lot more people, like Marieta, willing to lend a hand not letting plastic pollution go out to sea. I do have a better ending to our last night together though. We left Avalon early Tuesday morning after a dinner the night before at the The Lobster Pot. The waiter asked us where we would like to sit and Lindsey, spying a table for six elevated by a handful of steps into the back of a sawed off boat, said "How about there?" We all looked at the stern nestled up against the wall, shrugged, and climbed the stairs. Why not, what was one more meal elbow to elbow enclosed by the sides of a boat.

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

2009-10-06T13:24:00.000-07:00

Day 29 Monday 10/5/09

Noon Coordinates 32 47.708N 118 18.320WWhen I woke for my last morning alone on the ORV Alguita, it was anything but. Gwen, who does the watch before me, decided to stay up with me due to the problems Lindsey and Jeff were having with the auto pilot. The wind kicked up to over 40 knots causing the auto pilot to fail. The only way to handle the situation was to change course, and if need be steer. There was no beating into the winds. It would also require a sail change from the genoa jib to the staysail, but the captain didn’t want to risk someone getting hurt or blown overboard by the assaulting winds so we traveled off course at 10 knots per hour getting nowhere fast. Bill, who comes on after my shift, was also up due to the outlandish banging under the ship. Few could sleep.

Gwen, who takes good care of this blogger, often times let me sleep in an extra 15 minutes. Today it was an hour. I didn’t change my watch when we sailed into the Pacific Daylight Saving Times yesterday so when I looked at my watch at 0345, I figured I was ahead of the game. It was actually 0445. Not letting on that I was late, nor did she try to wake me, Gwen had just started the tea pot on the stove for me.

Yesterday I was running late too, only that time it was because I was making my way out of the top bunk, a wave came and literally threw me. I fell out of my bunk 4” down landing on the top of my left toes (don’t ask). To add insult to injury I slammed into the side of Gwen’s bed, trashing my leg all in one full swoop. It took a minute for me to rub out the sting. The captain, who has something for everything, came out of his state room with some all natural salve that eases out bruises. It worked on my leg, but the middle toe on my left foot is perhaps broken. Ugg.

We rolled into Avalon, Catalina Island, with a circus show of several sea birds and sea lions. (they swam beside our boat as if so happy to see us!) 3,460 nautical miles later!!!

We walked around the island like drunken sailors though not having a drink. It’s called dock rock. Once on a boat for any length of time and then off, one feels the world rock when while off the boat! We met Faith in the restaurant we had dinner at tonight, a six year old Girl Scout who her and her older sister had accolades for the captain’s work on protecting the oceans. Great to meet both of you!!!

We’re rocking on the island and look forward to seeing everyone at the Algalita Headquarters tomorrow afternoon! Thank you Gwen, Cooper, Lindsey, Jeffy Pop and especially Captain Moore for an experience of a lifetime, but more importantly, allowing me to see the unseen, plastics accumulating in our defenseless ocean.

Hopefully I’ll see many of you tomorrow! Bonnie