Pacific Voyage Sets Sail to Study Vast "Plastic Island&
Posted: 08-05-2009 10:45 AM
August 04, 2009
The second of two research ships bound for a huge "island" of plastic debris larger than the State of Texas leaves San Francisco today. The expedition, named Project Kaisei, will study the impact of the waste on marine life. The goal of the organisers will be to clear the plastic and recycle it for use as fuel and new products. The two ships, Kaisei - which left today - and New Horizon from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography - which left on 2 August - will take five days to reach the debris.
Ryan Yerkey the project's chief of operations has sailed across the Pacific twice and has watched the problem build up since the 1980s. He blames our increased use of disposable products. He told BBC News: "You are talking about quite a bit of marine debris but it's not a solid mass. A lot of the items have broken down. Of course there are larger items out there. But the items, depending on the density and the state they're in, can be anything from the surface down to 20ft to 30ft (6m to 9m) deep."
Plastics are a major source of the problem. The average consumer in an industrialized country uses 250 pounds every year. Plastic from around the world, including billions of plastic pellets representing its initial form, gets into the ocean from multiple entry points—rivers, sewage, ship spills, liter, runoff, etc. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that currently 46,000 pieces of plastic are floating on every square mile of the ocean.
The problem in the Pacific is so severe a humongous plastic-strewn patch floats between California and Hawaii within the North Pacific Gyre. According to the man who first discovered it in 1997, Captain John Moore, this patch is 1 ½ times the size of the contiguous United States and goes to a depth of at least 100 feet. And there is another huge rubbish patch off the coast of Japan. (View a YouTube video of Captain Moore visiting the Pacific garbage patch )
The Algalita Marine Research Foundation, founded by Moore, reports pieces of plastic outweigh surface zooplanton by 6 to 1 in the central North Pacific Gyre. According to their report, “Ninety percent of Laysan albatross chick carcasses and regurgitated stomach content contains plastic. Fish and seabirds mistake plastic for food. Plastic debris release chemical additives and plasticizers into the ocean. Plastic also absorbs hyrophobit pollutants like PCBs and pesticides like DDT. These pollutants bioaccumulte in the tissues of marine organisms, biomagnify up the food chain, and find their way into the foods people eat.”
Worldwide, eating pellets or other pieces of plastic kills more than a million birds each year along with hundreds of thousands of other fish and wildlife.
New calculations made by marine chemists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute suggest that low-oxygen "dead zones" in the ocean could expand significantly over the next century. Marine animals will need more oxygen to survive as more carbon dioxide created by burning fossil fuels dissolves from the atmosphere into the ocean, causing seawater to become gradually more acidic.
Researchers Peter Brewer and Edward Peltzer show that increases in carbon dioxide can make marine animals more susceptible to low concentrations of oxygen, and thus exacerbate the effects of low-oxygen "dead zones" in the ocean. Their calculations also show that the partial pressure of dissolved carbon dioxide gas (pCO2) in low-oxygen zones will rise much higher than previously thought. This could have significant consequences for marine life in these zones, making it harder for these animals to find food, avoid predators, and reproduce. Low concentrations of oxygen can have similar effects.
In trying to quantify the impacts of this "double whammy" on marine organisms, Brewer and Peltzer came up with the concept of a "respiration index." This index is based on the ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide gas in a given sample of seawater. The lower the respiration index, the harder it is for marine animals to respire.
In the past, marine biologists have defined "dead zones" based solely on low concentrations of dissolved oxygen. Brewer and Peltzer hope that their respiration index will provide a more precise and quantitative way for oceanographers to identify such areas. Tracking changes in the respiration index could also help marine biologists understand and predict which ocean waters are at risk of becoming dead zones in the future.
Previous studies have indicated that such oxygen minimum zones may expand over the next century. Brewer and Peltzer's research suggests that the effects of this expansion will be even more severe than previously forecast.
The number of oxygen-starved "dead" zones is growing in oceans around the globe. The situation is so bad many regions can now barely sustain marine life. In addition to Brewer and Peltzer's studies, other scientists say huge amounts of nitrogen-containing nutrients from farm fertilizers get most of the blame.
Since the 1960s, the number of dead zones worldwide has doubled every decade. Researchers say there are now about 400 of them. All together, they cover an area about the size of the state of Oregon. Although this is small compared to the total surface area of the oceans, it's big enough to damage marine ecology and hurt commercial fishing and shellfishing.
Huge amounts of pollution from industry and runoff from cities get dumped into coastal waters. This triggers a chain reaction that robs water of oxygen and makes it harder for living things to survive.
The pollutants provide nutrients that feed the growth of algae. As the algae dies and decays, bacteria levels increase. The bacteria gobble up much of the ocean's oxygen. This kills fish and other marine organisms. It also hurts people that depend on these resources for food or to make a living.
The Gulf of Mexico has one of the biggest dead zones. The lifeless zone stretches from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Texas border. It now covers an area of nearly 8,000 square miles (20,000 square km). Other dead zones have appeared in the Chesapeake Bay, the Pacific Northwest, and off the coast of South Carolina.
Dead zones have appeared off the coasts of South America, Britain, China, Norway, Japan, Portugal, Ghana, Australia, and New Zealand in recent years. The dead zones tend to get worse in the summer months. But over a period of several years, they can wipe out species from the zone permanently.
Posted by Casey Kazan with David Bunnell.
Sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8184397.stm
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... video.html
The second of two research ships bound for a huge "island" of plastic debris larger than the State of Texas leaves San Francisco today. The expedition, named Project Kaisei, will study the impact of the waste on marine life. The goal of the organisers will be to clear the plastic and recycle it for use as fuel and new products. The two ships, Kaisei - which left today - and New Horizon from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography - which left on 2 August - will take five days to reach the debris.
Ryan Yerkey the project's chief of operations has sailed across the Pacific twice and has watched the problem build up since the 1980s. He blames our increased use of disposable products. He told BBC News: "You are talking about quite a bit of marine debris but it's not a solid mass. A lot of the items have broken down. Of course there are larger items out there. But the items, depending on the density and the state they're in, can be anything from the surface down to 20ft to 30ft (6m to 9m) deep."
Plastics are a major source of the problem. The average consumer in an industrialized country uses 250 pounds every year. Plastic from around the world, including billions of plastic pellets representing its initial form, gets into the ocean from multiple entry points—rivers, sewage, ship spills, liter, runoff, etc. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that currently 46,000 pieces of plastic are floating on every square mile of the ocean.
The problem in the Pacific is so severe a humongous plastic-strewn patch floats between California and Hawaii within the North Pacific Gyre. According to the man who first discovered it in 1997, Captain John Moore, this patch is 1 ½ times the size of the contiguous United States and goes to a depth of at least 100 feet. And there is another huge rubbish patch off the coast of Japan. (View a YouTube video of Captain Moore visiting the Pacific garbage patch )
The Algalita Marine Research Foundation, founded by Moore, reports pieces of plastic outweigh surface zooplanton by 6 to 1 in the central North Pacific Gyre. According to their report, “Ninety percent of Laysan albatross chick carcasses and regurgitated stomach content contains plastic. Fish and seabirds mistake plastic for food. Plastic debris release chemical additives and plasticizers into the ocean. Plastic also absorbs hyrophobit pollutants like PCBs and pesticides like DDT. These pollutants bioaccumulte in the tissues of marine organisms, biomagnify up the food chain, and find their way into the foods people eat.”
Worldwide, eating pellets or other pieces of plastic kills more than a million birds each year along with hundreds of thousands of other fish and wildlife.
New calculations made by marine chemists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute suggest that low-oxygen "dead zones" in the ocean could expand significantly over the next century. Marine animals will need more oxygen to survive as more carbon dioxide created by burning fossil fuels dissolves from the atmosphere into the ocean, causing seawater to become gradually more acidic.
Researchers Peter Brewer and Edward Peltzer show that increases in carbon dioxide can make marine animals more susceptible to low concentrations of oxygen, and thus exacerbate the effects of low-oxygen "dead zones" in the ocean. Their calculations also show that the partial pressure of dissolved carbon dioxide gas (pCO2) in low-oxygen zones will rise much higher than previously thought. This could have significant consequences for marine life in these zones, making it harder for these animals to find food, avoid predators, and reproduce. Low concentrations of oxygen can have similar effects.
In trying to quantify the impacts of this "double whammy" on marine organisms, Brewer and Peltzer came up with the concept of a "respiration index." This index is based on the ratio of oxygen and carbon dioxide gas in a given sample of seawater. The lower the respiration index, the harder it is for marine animals to respire.
In the past, marine biologists have defined "dead zones" based solely on low concentrations of dissolved oxygen. Brewer and Peltzer hope that their respiration index will provide a more precise and quantitative way for oceanographers to identify such areas. Tracking changes in the respiration index could also help marine biologists understand and predict which ocean waters are at risk of becoming dead zones in the future.
Previous studies have indicated that such oxygen minimum zones may expand over the next century. Brewer and Peltzer's research suggests that the effects of this expansion will be even more severe than previously forecast.
The number of oxygen-starved "dead" zones is growing in oceans around the globe. The situation is so bad many regions can now barely sustain marine life. In addition to Brewer and Peltzer's studies, other scientists say huge amounts of nitrogen-containing nutrients from farm fertilizers get most of the blame.
Since the 1960s, the number of dead zones worldwide has doubled every decade. Researchers say there are now about 400 of them. All together, they cover an area about the size of the state of Oregon. Although this is small compared to the total surface area of the oceans, it's big enough to damage marine ecology and hurt commercial fishing and shellfishing.
Huge amounts of pollution from industry and runoff from cities get dumped into coastal waters. This triggers a chain reaction that robs water of oxygen and makes it harder for living things to survive.
The pollutants provide nutrients that feed the growth of algae. As the algae dies and decays, bacteria levels increase. The bacteria gobble up much of the ocean's oxygen. This kills fish and other marine organisms. It also hurts people that depend on these resources for food or to make a living.
The Gulf of Mexico has one of the biggest dead zones. The lifeless zone stretches from the mouth of the Mississippi River to the Texas border. It now covers an area of nearly 8,000 square miles (20,000 square km). Other dead zones have appeared in the Chesapeake Bay, the Pacific Northwest, and off the coast of South Carolina.
Dead zones have appeared off the coasts of South America, Britain, China, Norway, Japan, Portugal, Ghana, Australia, and New Zealand in recent years. The dead zones tend to get worse in the summer months. But over a period of several years, they can wipe out species from the zone permanently.
Posted by Casey Kazan with David Bunnell.
Sources:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8184397.stm
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... video.html