Captain Moore's Journey to the Accumulation Zone: An Update

On June 10, 2009 Captain Charles Moore set off on Algalita's Oceanographic Research Vessel for the first leg of a four month expedition from California to past the Northern Hawaiian Islands to test for plastic marine debris.

Captain Moore discovered the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, known as the the Pacific Gyre, and he is continuing his research to help all of us understand that the rapid rise in global plastic production is leading to a rise in plastic pollution and its devastating effects on our oceans and our lives.

Over the next few weeks, I will be posting emails directly from Captain Moore so we can follow his journey and better understand what we are doing to our oceans.

In his email of July 2nd, Captain Moore's manta trawl has been fixed and as they continue their journey to the accumulation zone, the Alguita is being followed by a trail of plankton and plastic.

July 2, 2009
Day 21
Noon Coordinates 24 18.68 160 58.85

Dear Laurie,

We are now two days out of Honolulu after getting our manta trawl re-welded and our spinnakler re-sewn. We are in the same situation we were in when we left Long Beach, in that we are using the engines to chase down the wind so we can sail. We need strong winds in excess of 15 knots in order to move our heavy vessel along at a good clip.

Today, although we were only 200 miles from Kauai, we were beset by the doldrums. Winds have been virtually nonexistent and the sea state has been a 1 on the Beaufort scale, meaning just tiny ripples on the surface.

In the late morning we realized we were transiting miles long lines of plankton that had left yellow streaks a few meters wide on the surface. I had seen this phenomena before when returning from a voyage to French Frigate Shoals in the Northwest Hawaiian chain.

The lines were also visible from the air at that time according to Jim Ingraham, who was flying over us after a rendezvous at Tern Island, where we studied their 10 year debris collection with Dr. Ebbesmeyer.

These thick blooms are also good places to look for plastic debris, and we were soon dipping up mass quantities of bottles, straps, sacks, ropes, parts of tubs and buckets, net fragments and hard plastic fragments.

Eventually we decided to dive in and look at this phenomena from below. We chose a particularly intense concentration area for our dive, and as we approached we found a green ghost net about 4 meters long in our path. We stopped right there and saw many species of fish around the net. This made for good diving.

Christiana, our ichthyologist managed to net two beautiful and exotic frog fish, normally coastal species, hanging around. At 24 degrees North Latitude, we are still well outside the accumulation zone around 30 degrees north. Nevertheless, we netted a deck full of debris during the morning while passing through mile after mile of yellow streaks of expired plankton.

We have not seen a ship for days. There are continent sized parcels of ocean out here that have their own identities that have never been described. We are getting to know our ocean planet in a direct way not available to landsmen or commercial mariners in a hurry to make port.

Aloha from the greater Hawaiian archipelago,
Captain Charles Moore
ORV Alguita

Comments

[lilpeg]

We can recycle 1 and 2 plastics in my city. There are many things that are not packaged in such plastics, e.g. yogurt in 5 plastics, all those covers of plastic jars and bottles. Would it be too much to ask that all packaging be recyclable or, better yet, compostable? Those cornstarch packaging peanuts were a good start. Or, could we start being able to return all non-recyclable materials to the venders. Surely a use could be found for them. Plastic is made of petroleum, yes, couldn't they become a new fuel????? I know, just dreaming.

[quiviran]

It doesn't always have to cost money. Sometimes social pressure helps. I have the packaging for two Apple laptop computers, one made in 2006 and one made is 2009. Both are the same screen size, the major driver in the size of the computer in the package. The 2006 packaging is about 50% larger in its outside (shipping box) dimensions and about 30% larger in its inner (display box) dimensions. Most of the difference is due to the complete elimination of foam packaging. The rest is due to clever rearrangement of the component parts (power adapter, manuals and software DVDs) inside the display box. The 2009 packaging is entirely paper. Apple set a corporate goal to improve and it did.

That being said, making the disposition of plastic packaging a cost to the manufacturer would probably help bring along the reluctant to a more responsible position.

[leopoldmozart]

We have seen an exponential increase of three important neurological diseases over the last 30 years: autism, parkinson's disease, and alzheimer's disease. No one knows why. (Clearly, it's not vaccines that are giving the elderly these diseases, and every scientific study comparing the vaccinated, lightly vaccinated, and unvaccinated, show no difference in autism rate.) One of the explanations to be ruled out HAS to be the exponential growth of pollution in our water and household air by plastics and organic additives to foam rubber and plastics.

[AntiClast]

1/3 of all landfill material in the U.S. is packaging.
It's expensive to collect and put into garbage dumps.
And here's a dumb thing -- it's annoying to have to unwrap layers of plastic and cardboard to get at the purchased object.
Fish comes wrapped up to 5 layers. One suffices. It takes me time to unwrap it, then once I get the fish cooking, I have to pick up the kitchen. Waste of my time.
And the Microsoft software that came packaged in 5 layers -- it took me 15 minutes to get to the disk, 20 seconds to install the software. The layer of impenetrable plastic resisted desk scissors, kitchen scissors, paring knife, butcher knife. I had to go out to the garage to find a box cutter. (The store had secured the software so I had to request it brought out from the locked cabinet or back room.)
Industry ought to be nagged to reduce the waste. I heard other consumers complain about the difficulty of undoing packaging. It doesn't help anybody, consumes resources, and wrecks the planet. Why?

[kendraro]

Agreed. Why are they doing this? It must cost them money. We don't want it. Listen up manufacturers! Lighten the packaging!

[valkyrie607]

It doesn't cost them money--that's the problem. If it did, if we forced them to pay for the costs of disposal, then you can bet this wouldn't be a problem.