pacific garbage patch

Let’s start with some music… wish I didn’t have to post a video for every song but until I can figure something else out it’s all I can do. Today I make a request: buy something! No, that’s not really my request (although please don’t let me stop you), my request is that you start the song and scroll south and read this post and heed it well, and try to buy less plastic, recycle more, and do what you can. I’ll be the first to admit that I find it quite challenging, bottled water is an ingrained habit, but I’m gonna try to break it.
Thanks for visiting…

Released in 1971, the quintessential melodious call to environmental awareness, Marvin Gaye’s Mercy, Mercy Me (the Ecology).

So a week or so ago, on a walk on Sunset Cliffs in San Diego, I came across some trash; the usual beer bottles, cigarette butts, food wrappers and whatnot… unfortunately not an uncommon occurence. On this day, right at the edge of the cliffs, there was a corrugated cardboard box. Typically I don’t pick up porous paper products (I try to limit myself to non-biodegradable trash collecting), but this time there was a plastic bait bag laying next to the box, a feather breeze would’ve blown it into the sea. I went to pick up the bag (and the box, since I was there), and lo and behold, the box, right there on the edge of the cliffs, was FILLED with plastic bait bags. Close by was a bag of hard plastic ties, opened and strewn about. I spewed some expletives about the @#$%* idiots who abuse the same ocean they rely on for sustenance, and continued on my way.

Interestingly, that very same morning after my walk I went for coffee at a little shop at the beach and noticed some kind of ruckus going on at the shoreline. Turns out an “extreme athlete” named Tom Jones (not the same Tom Jones women used to toss their panties to) was paddling through and making a landfall on his way to Imperial Beach on his California Paddle. His cause:

“Tom is drawing world-wide attention to the problem of plastic pollution in our oceans. A recent study has found that there is six times more plastic in the ocean than plankton off the coast of California. A United Nations Environmental Report estimated that there is more than 5.76 million tons of plastic in our oceans. To put that in perspective, that’s enough to put 2/3 of California in a plastic bag. At the current plastic usage acceleration rate of 5% per year, according to the Resin Review published by the American Plastic Council, we could cover the entire state of California in plastic by 2014 and every landmass on Earth by the year 2042.”

As obsessive as I am on the topic I had to start researching and then, only a few nights later, there was a segment on Countdown about the ‘Pacific Garbage Patch’, “an area twice the size of Texas that’s become a toilet bowl of plastics“… I’d never heard of it but turns out oceanographers have been researching and warning us about it for years. The Countdown segment isn’t available but here’s some mainstream (sorry) video, the most recent and concise information I could find to share:

To view the motion of the vortex in the ocean click here. Since they sell it, I’m not gonna post a 9 minute video entitled “Synthetic Sea”, by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. You can find it online but I’m not going to post it. There is a dizzying amount of information out there, you’ll find more links below.

There is a new continent in the Pacific Ocean. Actually it has been forming for years. It was documented in the 1950’s. It is larger now, by some reports twice the size of Texas. And growing. The most amazing thing of all is the substance of the island.

Plastic. Trash. Junk. The North Pacific Gyre is an area of swirling currents moving in a clockwise pattern that the major ocean currents lead into. Think of it as an aquatic roundabout in heavy traffic- very difficult to get off of. Over time the plastics and trash that has been intentionally and accidentally dumped into our oceans has found its way to the North Pacific Gyre and remains there. Accumulating at an alarming rate it is literally forming a continent made of trash. click here to continue…

Here are a few things you can do:

1. Use canvas bags to shop.
2. Take your own mug to Starbucks.
3. Recycle plastic as much as you can.
4. Use glass and other recyclable materials when possible.
5. Limit the amout of things you buy that are encased in plastic.
6. Pick something up, else it will likely end up in the sea (that’s from me)
7. Boycott balloons. Balloons released even inland will also likely end up blowing into the sea (yep, that one too).

More information:
Plastic Ocean by Susan Casey from Best Life
Trash Vortex from Greenpeace International
Drowning in an Ocean of Plastic by Stephen Leahy in Wired Magazine
Trashed by Charles Moore
Navigating the Pacific’s ‘Garbage Patch’ from NPR
Surfrider tips for reducing plastic debris
Cryptic Moth: Two guys, two cameras, and a world full of plastic…

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