Earthsky Interviews
Marcus Eriksen describes ocean gyre of plastic garbage
08-31-2009 - Water
Marcus Eriksen: You get debris that leaves our coastal watersheds, goes out to sea, and gets stuck in the middle.
Eriksen said this garbage in the north Pacific is less like a floating island, and more like a “soup” of plastic.
Marcus Eriksen: There are particles of cups of spoons and knives of plastic bags and plastic bottles, and they get smaller down to the basic plastic polymer, which is microscopic.
The circular movement of the ocean – in the form of an ocean gyre – is trapping all this plastic. Eriksen spoke of the large rotating ocean gyre that covers much of the north Pacific.
Marcus Eriksen: The size of the gyre is the entire garbage patch. It’s roughly twice the size of the United States.
Eriksen said the plastic doesn’t fully biodegrade and is often toxic. He said marine life feeds on it, including fish eaten by humans.
Marcus Eriksen: It’s absorbing PCBs, pesticides from farms, oil drops from cars like a sponge. Aa plastic particle, we have documented, can have up to a million times more pollutants stuck on it than ambient seawater. And because the Earth is spinning, that causes the oceans to spin. So you get these rotating gyres — they’re like giant toilet bowls that never flush.
Erikson said that one thing will help: curbing our use of disposable plastic.
Our thanks to:
Dr. Marcus Eriksen
Director of Education and Research
Algalita Marine Research Foundation
Long Beach, CA
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Thanks to Marcus Eriksen and the Dot Earth Staff.
Many more people speaking out loudly, clearly and often as all of you are doing is what we need most in our time because too few people are expressing understandable concern and moral outrage about the reckless dissipation of Earth’s resources and the relentless pollution of its environs now being perpetrated worldwide by wealthy economic powerbrokers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians. As a consequence, the voice of the human community calling out in unison, “Ecology is primary, economy secondary,” is not yet reverberating and being heard within the highest echelons of international organizations and nation-states.
Sincerely,
Steve
Wow, what a wake-up call! What percentage of our disposable Styrafoam coffee cups, Styrafoam and plastic eating utensils, plastic bags, disposable razors and whatnot end up in the ocean?
Bruce
Much like the Doomsday clock, perhaps there needs to be a specific clock for when one or more of the oceans becomes dead. Although morbid and largely only symbolic the clock would serve as standard to measure future “progress” respecting the health of the oceans. But wait! I had a terrible thought—a doomsday clock for the ocean may presently register after midnight.
I also found this particular podcast to be extremely shocking and sad …
Saving the Earth and life as we know it will not be difficult at the moment the self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe among us, the ones possessing a lion’s share of the world’s wealth as well as bought-and-paid-for powermongers, decide to regard the Earth and its environs at least as important as the status, privileges, wealth and power which are derived from their conscious manipulation of the global economy for their and their cronies’ selfish interests.
HI THE PACIFTIC OCENO
How terrible, I hope we can do more than just cut down our use to help fix this. I wonder if this is too new/not sensational enough to be a major issue… it seems as though it should be. If for no other reason that we eat the fish that eat the toxins in the ocean. I realize this was posted several months ago and was wondering if there was any news?
I think I remember browsing some years ago about river pollution and the oceans. At that time the sources stated that it was not economically feasible to set up cleaning stations at the river/ocean junctions. However, I think even vounteers sitting in boats with long handled nets skimming garbage out would make an impact.
What I think is not economically feasable is the loss of the health of our oceans. We are already becoming unable to eat from them. The land will suffer next being over burdened with our demand for feeding us.
We seriously need to set up plants at the rivers’ ends to clean toxins and debris before releasing that water to the oceans. Why can’t we add this function into our current hydro plants as well?
It would have to be a fast system for collecting the toxins. Perhaps there are different elements (minerals, metals, plastics) that attract and absorb toxins that can be used as filters along our water ways.
Come on, we’re smart enough to make this mess, we should be smart enough to clean it up and prevent it from happening again!
This should not be an issue dependant on economics.
Melissa, I totally agree with you. It should not be dependent on economics. Human health is completely linked to and dependent on the health of the Earth.
The United States, Canada, and many other developed countries have greatly cleaned up their respective rivers and actively identify individuals and companies that dump trash into the waterways (although it still happens at the hands of careless people, ships at sea, and flooding). Sadly, many developing nations use waterways as their primary trash dumping grounds. Having lived in many 2nd and 3rd world nations, I personally witnessed trash dumping into the rivers by entire communities. My daughter recently visited the Philippines and commented on how multi-story trash heaps border the shoreline and overflow into the sea. It is truly an issue that requires international cooperation and economic resources to resolve.
In the data modeling world we have a term “Garbage In Garbage Out.” In the case of the Pacific Ocean it would be better stated “Garbage In Garbage Stays In.”
Hank, I don’t know if you saw it, but there was a really interesting 2-part series in the New Yorker recently by Ian Frasier … about his car trip across Siberia. And one thing he kept mentioning was the trash … littered and mounded everywhere. In Siberia! It just ruined my thought about what Siberia would be like. We walk by a creek in my town, and every morning there’s trash littered along the creek bed. We or other walkers pick it up sometimes, or the city picks it up (it’s in a city park). But the next day it’s always back.
Deborah,
I didn’t catch the New Yorker series. I’ll look for it on-line.
We do field research in remote locations, mostly in the desert South West. It’s unbelievable (and frustrating) how careless minded people can trash up some of the most remote and pristine locations. We often carry out twice as much trash as we bring in. Seriously, I’ve found discarded beer bottles and other trash 97 miles away from the nearest paved highway. I could write a book about some of the strangest trash items we’ve carried out of remote locations.
In our remote work, we witness careless behavior on the part of individuals but in the case of 2nd and 3rd world nations the problem is much more pervasive. It mostly stems from lack of infrastructure, poor policy, economics, and education. In that context I believe international initiative seems the most probable solution. I believe the solution involves addressing the economics of building an infrastructure to process and contain refuse as opposed to the only alternative of using rivers to carry it away to the oceans. Actually, I don’t think the communities that dump in the rivers give any thought to where it winds up nor have any concept of the problems Erikson brings to light; just so long as the trash is carried away. For this reason, education is equally important.
BTW, most plastics break down under UV exposure. Unfortunately, little to no UV penetrates much beyond the top few inches of the ocean surface. The plastics and toxins will be there for quite a long time.
Hank … exactly. The plastic in the ocean will be there a long, long time. Scary!
Humans are messy creatures. Why we insist on fouling our own nests is beyond me. The good news is: the plastic will not last long in the sun and is fairly inert. Long term, no harm, no foul. Just a nasty habit that will continue to create eye-sores.
How to fix it? Stop throwing trash out on the ground. Live what we preach. Every day, every time. We could pressure our criminals in congress to stop doing business with countries like China and North Korea that make huges messes with no thought of the consequences.
Hi Ben, no kidding! Plastic on dry land does break down relatively quickly, but apparently plastic in the ocean doesn’t break down easily. I heard EarthSky’s raw interview with Dr. Erikson and at one point he seemed almost embarrassed to talk about this … apparently he’d recently been mis-quoted elsewhere in the media … but he did say very clearly that plastic under the ocean surface gets so little sunlight that it breaks down only VERY slowly. In the transcript above, he says ‘… the plastic doesn’t fully biodegrade and is often toxic. He said marine life feeds on it, including fish eaten by humans.’ Yikes.
Deborah,
If the plastic is visible on the surface, it will get enough sunlight to breakdown pretty quickly. I have installed a lot of HDPE pipe and liner. Even with UV blockers, it is only rated for a couple of years in the sun. PVC will do a little better but not much.
Also, Polyethylene, HDPE (High density polyethylene) LDPE (Low density polyethylene) LLDPE Linear low density polyethylene) and the like only are comprised of caarbon and hydrogen and are basically long chain aliphatic hydrocarbons. They break down quickly and completely to carbon and hydrogen. Plants and what have you quickly get them built into the carbon cycle. PET (Polyethylene teraphthalate) such as is used in drink bottles is essentially a synthetic carbohydrate consisting of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. It also breaks down completely with no toxicity as well. PVC, polyvinyl chloride is a little more comples and does feature chlorine on the molecule. I have not studied the breakdown products of this plastic but I surmise that vinyl chloride could be one of the steps. Vinyl chloride is considered a carcinogen. However, it doesn’t last long in nature either. I did a fairly large TCE (trichloroethylene) clean-up in Chicago several years ago. The TCE at the edges of the plume had been degraded by bacteria to vinyl chloride and then to its constituents in a short distance in the soil. The TCE had been spilled by the US Government and McDondald Douglass during the WWII production of airplanes. In the ocean, I would think that the stirring, the sun and the liquid would facilitate the breakdown.
Long term, the plastics are not a significant problem. They are, however, a sign of a very messy and inconsiderate society.
Hi I am tring to wright a letter to the mayor . For a school thing and I
need to find out how much trash and what kind of trash ends up in the ocean. So if you can find it out pleas reply so I can finsh my repoart.
woops, that link didn’t light up. google ‘algalita marine research’, and you should be able to find what you’re looking for.
Thank you all for your comments. A great source of information (here\’s looking at you, Chelsea) is here:
http://www.algalita.org/
Best,
Beth
I think this site is very resourceful and i also like reading all the information about the environment…
It is sad to hear about all these pollutants…
Humans might be good at keeping themselves clean but when it comes to keeping the environment clean most people just dont care and i think it is pretty sad…they are killing our planet…=[
Chelsea- take a look at junkraft.blogspot.com These guys built a raft out of 50,000 plastic bottles and floated to Hawaii right through the Pacific gyre after leaving from L.A. They saw first hand what a mess is there.
What about all the plastic toxins that end up in the Arctic? You didn’t mention this. Plastic toxins as well as mercury and others do not dissipate in such cold water. The animals and people there already carry these toxins in their systems. The health of the people is being compromised – underweight babies at birth, many ear infections and I don’t know what else in particular. Mothers milk in the Inuit peoples of Canada and Greenland is more polluted than mothers milk in the large cities of Canada. Some of these pollutants do not come from floating plastics. The point is that none of these toxins break down very slowly or not at all in COLD water.