Community Corner

A Garbage Patch of Plastic Pollution

Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation came to talk to Staples students last week about his 1997 discovery in the Pacific Ocean.

About 1,000 miles off North America, a Garbage Patch of plastic soup simmers in the Pacific Ocean.

That's according to Capt. Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation who discovered the trash site in 1997 and came to speak to Staples students about it last week.

The soup's ingredients include everyday items, such as basketballs, plastic cutlery, bottles, bags, juice boxes, umbrella handles, toothbrushes and glue sticks. They are added continuously, broken down over time, and create all-you-can eat type helpings for fish and other marine species.

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While the broken-down pieces of plastic are the same size as much of the food small fish, baby turtles and seabirds might eat, it causes many of these animals to die because their digestive systems can't process the plastic.

The Pacific Garbage Patch, is more than twice the size of Texas and is growing every day, Moore said. But it's not the only trash site in the ocean. Four other garbage patches are currently being studied off the coasts of Australia, Asia, Africa and South America, he said.

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Moore, who appeared on the "Colbert Report" earlier this month to talk about his discovery, came to speak at Staples High School about the plastic pollution and the need to create more awareness about its effects on wildlife, the food web and the changing oceanic landscape.

The event was organized by Mike Rowinsky, a biology teacher at Green Farms Academy and naturalist at the Sherwood Island Nature Center, and Cecelia Duffy, a biology teacher at Staples High School. Rowinsky has also accompanied Moore on one of his voyages to the Pacific Garbage Patch.

When Moore goes on one of his voyages to the site, located far west of the Hawaiian islands, he sails.

"You can't carry enough fuel to study the deep remote Pacific Ocean," he said. "You have to be able to sail."

 The net he uses to trawl for trash only dips about 20 centimeters below the ocean's surface, he said.

In one day of sampling, he's found 2.3 billion pieces of plastic. While the amount of plastic in the ocean is unknown, Moore estimates it must be at least 100 million metric tons.

"To think you can travel this far out and find this amount of waste is alarming," Moore said.

The ocean's currents have created this Garbage Patch. Currents off the coast of Japan are pushing their trash toward the United States and American trash is being pushed toward Japan. It all converges in 5,000 square miles of ocean — a patch that's ever growing and flowing.

"The stuff is spread out all over the North Pacific," Moore said. "We can't just take care of the problem in one spot."

Another problem is that the plastic pollution is so far out in the ocean, it's beyond any country's jurisdictional boundaries.

"There's not a lot of ownership there, so anything that will be done in the location would have to be done on an international level," Moore said. "It's part of the ocean that belongs to everyone and yet belongs to no one and up until now no one has done anything about it."

Some are challenging the United Nations to propose solutions for this phenomenon, Moore said, but plans have yet to formalize.

The plastic is not only floating in the ocean or in the bellies of marine species, it's becoming part of marine habitats, Moore said. Coral is starting to form on the larger plastic chunks. The plastic is also ending up on beaches of Hawaii and other areas.

"A new plastic sand is prevalent on the big island of Hawaii," Moore said, as he passed around a bag of the sand mixed with multicolored plastic pieces, faded by the sun and salt.

Moore said he's found plastic in the Garbage Patch that date to World War II and the problem has resulted from a "throw-away living."

When a Staples student asked what people could do to remedy the situation, Moore said the plastic that's there might be there forever but there are ways people can help stop the problem from persisting.

"Consider the Four 'R's instead of the Three 'R's, " he said. "Refuse, reuse, recycle as much as possible and reduce.

"The first is 'refuse,'" he said. "Refuse to have it packed in a package. Bring your own cup to Starbucks. Bring your own bag to the supermarket. ... I also think you can pressure elected officials, press for legislation on banning stupid stuff. It's stupid to have Styrofoam for everything."

Moore said the best way to get the point across is to "just talk."

"There's a lot of things you can do, but you have to be a little bit of a problem for people," he said.

For more information on Moore's Algalita Marine Research Foundation, click here.


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