Taking On the Plastic Vortex: Project Kaisei

"There has never been a time in history when something in the ocean wasn't food."
-- George Orbelian, Co-founder of Project Kaisei.

The Garbage Patch, or Plastic Vortex, is a huge area of floating plastic garbage that stretches hundreds of square miles northwest of Hawaii in the ocean's No Man's Land. While it was discovered about ten years ago, scientists don't have much data about this remote area of the ocean. Project Kaisei just launched a unique expedition to study and document The Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, sending their two ships off on Sunday and Monday, Aug 2nd and 3rd. The effort is a very unique collaboration between the international non-profit Project Kaisei, dedicated to finding solutions to this global challenge, and scientists from Scripps, the world-renowned UC San Diego Oceanographic Institute.

I visited the Scripp's research ship, The New Horizon, in San Diego on Saturday and spoke with the scientists as they were preparing for the voyage. They were testing and packing all their nets, equipment for deep-water collection, and hundreds of jars. They were excited to be part of a research project that had a larger context with the work of Project Kaisei -- their data won't get overlooked in a journal but will be immediately used to find solutions and raise awareness.

The scientists are an impressive team of grad students, led by Miriam Goldstein and her faculty advisor. They are studying an array of topics from the plastic's toxicity to its impacts on plankton, the food chain, fish, sea birds and whales. Miriam explained that the research team was going to target high plastic areas in order to understand the worst-case scenarios. They will measure how much plastic there is, what kind and size, and what animals are associated with it. "

Miriam said, "The scientists are collecting the basic research data that people can do other things with. We make the numbers. It takes a lot of work to make a fact. So it's exciting to see it go out in the world and get applied".

"Birds are opportunistic surface foragers who eat floating plastic garbage thinking its food", said Andrew Titmus, who will be tracking which bird species have a high susceptibility to plastics ingestion. "Plastics also attract magnified levels of toxins such as DDT, pertro residue, and flame retardants, even more than normal sediment", said Chelsea Rochman, who will be measuring how toxins stick to plastic, and how the chemicals transfer into the tissue of the animals that mistakenly eat plastic. They have both already started taking measurements off California's coast to be used as a baseline against the high plastic areas.

All of the teams movements across the ocean can be followed on a Google earth site that tracks where the ships are allows the crew to upload short video clips right from iphones.

Check out up to the moment activities at http://kaisei.blipback.com/. You can see the strange giant squid they found without any tentacles, and Andrew describing his bird research. You can also follow a regular blog from Scripps at http://seaplexscience.com/.

I also just received email news from Projects Kaisei's founder, Doug Woodring, on their 3rd day at sea on the Scripps ship. Heading west from California they've had calm seas and have been able to get into a rhythm of day and night shifts of sample collecting.

Woodring wrote, "So far we have some interesting sea life, a very cute vampire squid which is black and about the size of a small guinea pig with wings. ... We've already done over 36 hours of sample trawls, and are now on our quest for the gyre which is still about 4 days away. ... We have also started acoustic tests for marine mammals, allowing us to listen with six types of microphones for a variety of dolphins, porpoises and whales. So far it has been working well, and just after deployment we heard the clicks of dolphins just near the boat. Low and behold, as we ran out to see them from the upper deck, there they were. It was like playing a video game, and then going into "reality" and seeing them right in front of you, instead of on the screen".

Almost every scientist I talked to acknowledged that the only way to stop the consequences of the plastic garbage pollution is to prevent it from getting into the ocean at its source. When I asked Andrew what he could do when he knew which species are most at risk, he sighed, "The problem is we can't stop the birds from eating the plastic. My hope is that raising awareness will help us reduce plastic consumption, especially for single use items".

The world is starting to realize that there is no "away" when it comes to garbage. Interest in recycling is booming from Mexico City, who just started their first massive recycling program, to The World Federation of Recycling, that helped fund Project Kaisei's expedition. Project Kaisei hopes to find ways to clean up the garbage and recycle it into fuel. "There are so many good solutions out there", says George Orbelian of Project Kaisei, who created the original ocean flag, "We'll compile the data into a content management system and we'll look at what's best for the environment".

Stay tuned for more news about the Project Kaisei as the ships arrive at the Plastic Vortex.

 

Comments

[tvedder]

It cannot be recycled because it is not at all really "floating garbage" as it is often (and in this article) misrepresented. Make no mistake, Having all this gunk souping up the ocean ain't a good thing, and this Kaisei Project showing some initiative in getting the mess cleaned up is fantastic, but let's stop engaging in hyperbole. It is a large area with a higher-than-usual amount of microscopic degrading plastic in it. UV radiation (thankfully) causes the plastic to breakdown as the garbage floats out to see --usually taking several years to get there. An old NOAA analysis found that this microscopic plastic was only detectable in about HALF of the hundreds of football-f­ield-sized areas they sampled. Hardly a "huge area of floating plastic garbage". I'm no expert on the matter, but my several minutes of research on it seems to have made me much more educated than Ms Thomson.

[Konnie]

i have also watched the phenomonon over the years and wondered to myself, why on earththere has not been one investment by a savvy business man not been made in using this free resource to produce
electricity for the nearest land mass......­...or recycling for a different product based on what's there,
or just chewing it up to get rid of it for the world good - like all the oceanic studies schools from
around the world could send students there to man the place for a semester for work/study,
with the both the school and the student getting credit and maybe the nobel peace prize for something.­........wh­atever
happened to puting your money where your mouth is for the good of everyone on the planet
and not just profit. lets see" microsoft garbage patch, staples ocean arena, toyota cleaners,
the list goes on.

[Mary Liz Thomson - Huffpost Blogger]

I wrote a previous article about this issue where I aknowlegded how Charles Moore discovered the Garbage Patch and his research with Algilita. He's doing great work too - Its all important! What Project Kaisei can help with is taking the research and building the foundation for real clean up efforts.

[SimJack]

My understanding is that there are several 'trash' gyres in the oceans, this being the largest. According to some articles I've read, it's not just several hundred square miles in size but the size of Texas. Charles Moore, his team of researchers and his Algalita Research Foundation have been on this for years and one blogger on HuffPost has written several post on this site.

ARF: http://www.algalita.org/charles_bio.html

[muhair]

Indeed, from reading this story one would think Project Kaisei had invented the idea of investigating the Garbage Patch. Charles Moore actually discovered the patch 12 years ago and has returned many times since with his research crews to quantify it; his Algalita Foundation has underwritten groundbreaking research into the properties of the plastics and their effects on marine life. Without Moore's pioneering work, there'd be no such thing as Project Kaisei, but you'd never know it from this otherwise well-executed piece....

[SimJack]

I agree, it is a well executed article and is a positive contribution to raise awareness and increase discussion on this important topic. But not providing credit to to those who discovered and initiated methodical research in any field is an unacceptable oversight in science, hence my initial comment.

[zizyphus]

There are beaches on the southern shore of Hawaii island that are so completely covered by the plastic garbage from that floating plastic mess, that it would be faster to remove the sand than the garbage. We spent hours down there cleaning it up. You could just sit in one place and fill large garbage bags full of lighters, toothbrushes, plastic bottles, etc. You could see the fishes' teethmarks where they tried to eat it. We spent hours, filled a dump truck. It still wasn't looking much better. And more kept washing up.

[momurph]

Very comprehensive article on how the garbage we put into the ocean ends up in our stomach. Thanks for reporting on a team of people who are finally trying to do something about it!

[Spokane]

It will be fascinating to find out what this plastic is and where did the majority of come from... I have a hundred guesses but someone tell me the best site for day to day coverage of this rather than some weekly report or monthly journal. There has to be a way to communicate with these folks via internet traffic and ask some relevant but uniformed questions that I for one might have?

[mamacat]

A few years ago, we spent some time traveling on the ocean between Hawaii and North America. The amount of floating debris, mostly plastic, was shocking, and we didn't even pass through the area where the plastic is reportedly in highest concentration.
Later, we did some traveling in the mid-Atlantic, and the amount of surface debris was considerably less. This is all anecdotal evidence, but it is what we saw.
So, now the question is, where is all of this plastic and other debris coming from? My guess would be that it is coming from the ships sailing between Asia and North America.

[ezeflyer]

If it's all in one place, it can be netted and recycled.

[joebaggadonuts]

I hope so.

[matseattle]

Excellent article, I didn't realize the magnitude of this massive plastic wasteland until I read this. This is devasting for our oceans, marine life and ultimately to the human race, something has got to be done. I will be looking for future updates, please continue to keep us all informed!