Een Oceaan vol Plastic

Tales of Plastic in the Ocean

CAPT. CHARLES MOORE / Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF) 1nov02

To all board members, supporters and friends of Algalita,

The California and the World Ocean '02 Conference in Santa Barbara has just concluded and we have sailed Alguita into her slip in Alamitos Bay. Since everything went so well over our 3 month, 7,500 mile voyage, and culminated in such a fantastic media blitz and marine debris panel presentation, I think I will try to summarize highlights of the entire trip.

On July 24, we left Long Beach with reporter Tom Hayden of US News and World Report on board headed for Santa Barbara to take on organic produce and fuel. We left for Hawaii via the Gyre the next day and had to seek shelter in Tyler Bight on the lee side of San Miguel Island in order to hoist our sails in 40 knot winds. This proved to be the roughest day of the entire voyage. Our twofold mission was 1) to use paired bongo nets to assess the ocean's plastic load down to 30 meters and 2) to document plastic ingestion by and entanglement of filter feeders using video, day and night - in and out of the water. All six crew members were scuba divers. The invertebrate fauna near 42 N, 140 W were stupendous. The amount of plastic debris there was too. The interaction was inevitable and we videoed and then captured a jellyfish entangled in black fishing line. Photographing the plastic fragments in situ and the animals that had ingested them proved to be difficult. On the return trip, we decided to bring the animals on board and put them in a small aquarium, this worked better, and we got film of a colony of Salpa fusiformis eating plastic fragments-entanglement on the way over, ingestion on the way back. When we reached Hawaii, the media didn't bite right away (no problem, we had plenty to do) and we boarded a team of Dolphin experts who were chartering us to get DNA samples from Spinner dolphin at French Frigate Shoals. We also signed papers for Dr. Curt Ebbesmeyer and Jim Ingraham to visit Tern Island, the site of the US Fish and Wildlife Service base there, by plane. Debris has been collected systematically and recorded there every two weeks for over ten years. Our purpose was to use Curt's extensive experience in the field to source the debris. When we arrived at Tern Island aboard Alguita, we laid out 7 semi-weekly debris collections on tables in the warehouse for inspection. We also trawled extensively around the atol to see if it acted like a seive for plastic particles. We were able to take Curt and Jim onboard to do sampling on an especially calm day when they were there, and we made a startling discovery. Many tiny fragments were in our surface trawl, many more than on our previous trawls in the area during rougher sea states. It should have been obvious, more and smaller particles make it to the surface when it's calm. Surface size class and abundance is a function of sea state. Michael Bailey of Hawaiians for the Preservation of Native Ecosystems was our videographer for this leg and worked virtually nonstop. His compelling interviews were included in our new video presented at the conference. Upon our return to Honolulu from this leg, the media bit big time. Our voyage coincided with the NOWRAMP (Nortwest Hawiian Islands Rapid Assessment and Monitoring Program) team's voyage, and the media put us in the mix. We were on two TV stations in one night, on National Public Radio the next day, in the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu weekly. Before we left Honolulu, I emailed an Op Ed piece to the editor of the Santa Barbara News Press. (attached)

On the way back from Hawaii through the Gyre, we made a major discovery - a Langmuir windrow of plastic debris stretching for miles. Contrary rotating ocean currents had brought mostly unfouled plastic of every description together to form a line. We sampled extensively, and had a very interesting if disappointing night dive -- three of us could not find one zooplanktonic creature at night near this phenomenon - the ocean was empty except for plastic - I don't know why. We had calm weather all the way back to Santa Barbara as the High followed us so we got to sample and dive closer to the coast than ever before on a gyre voyage - less plastic, but it was still there. When we arrived in Santa Barbara on October 22, the extensive advance work by AMRF board members paid off. We got immediate TV coverage, which played on the TV in our host room during our reception on Sunday! The Op Ed piece had made it into the Santa Barbara News Press that morning. The conference itself had two press officers: Stanley Young of the California Resources Agency and Bill Rukeyser of Cal EPA. They both came to the host room and were impressed by our displays, especially the stomach contents of a 4 month old Laysan Albatross chick-(red Japanese mayonnaise jar lids with kupie doll figures, red Japanese cigarette lighters, red fragments galore)-a huge bolus for a four month old animal.

The word got out. The conference co-chair, Winston Hickox, of the California Environmental Protection Agency mentioned the work of Algalita Foundation to the 900 attendees at the opening session. The story in US News and World Report broke that same day. Stanley Young decided to give us our own press conference, catered in the centrally located conference press room, the next day, Tuesday, Oct. 29. We hastily made color copies of the US News article to add to our press kits. Conference co-chair, Winston Hickox and State Water Board head, Celeste Cantu' officially announced our $482,000 research grant to study how pre-production plastic pellets (nurdles) get into the LA and San Gabriel Rivers and onto the beach. The State Water Resources Control Board (Under CA EPA) published a special edition of their "California Water News" for the press conference with the headline: "Research to Prevent Coastal Water Pollution Gets Nearly $500,000 State Water Board Grant." Inside they said: "The Algalita Marine Research Foundation will study how trash, plastics, and minute debris hurt the beneficial uses of the Los Angeles River and San Gabriel River watersheds, as well as other watersheds in California's urban areas." They then went on to say: "The recently approved zero trash Total Maximum Daily Load for the Los Angeles River and San Gabriel River Watersheds focuses on the large debris, however, recent studies conducted by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and the Southern California Coastal Water Research Project (SCCWRO) suggest that plastic fragments less than 5mm in size occur in a mass six times higher than the mass of plankton in the mid-Pacific Gyre and, in near coastal waters off Southern California, the average mass of plastic is two and a half times greater than that of plankton." To have our state government acknowledge our work in this manner is most gratifying, to say the least! After the press conference, one TV station came to the boat and the other used film from the press conference on their 11 o'clock news.

Bill Macdonald edited 50 hours of video from our voyage by burning the midnight oil to produce a great 12 minute tape to play at my 20 min. marine debris panel presentation the next morning at 8am. In spite of the early hour, I had a good turnout and a student from Scripps in La Jolla came up to me after the conference ended and said we had the best presentation. He especially liked our displays of actual samples. During the closing ceremony that noon, the featured speakers were David Rockefeller, Jr. and recipient of the AMRF "Coast and Ocean Connection" environmental hero award, Terry Tamminen. Terry's speech was absolutely spellbinding, and he received an ovation far longer and louder than the other speakers. Following Terry, Beth Jines, EPA Asst. Secretary for Water and Waste Programs spoke and during her speech mentioned the importance of plastic trash while gesturing towards our table in the front row. A very pleasant way to end the conference with AMRF being acknowledged publicly as it was at the opening session.

After an all night sail to Long Beach through a parking lot of containerships, tankers, and bulk loaders off the backlogged ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles, we arrived at our dock on Bay Shore Avenue. Home sweet home. Not long after I walked in, the ORV Alguita, Inc. office phone rang. "Hello, this is KGO news in San Francisco. We would like to talk to someone about the plastics problem." They had read the US News article and wanted to do a story when they are in the LA area next week covering the election. We set up a TV interview for next Wednesday.

And so it goes.

Best to all, Charlie

Captain Charles Moore
Aboard Oceanographic Research Vessel, Alguita
www.alguita.com
www.algalita.org