Source: Associated Press

Researchers report increased plastic debris, or ‘floating garbage,’ covering thousands of square miles and more in a remote area off the Atlantic Ocean.

The floating garbage — hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents — was documented by two groups of scientists who trawled the sea between scenic Bermuda and Portugal’s mid-Atlantic Azores islands.

The studies describe a soup of micro-particles similar to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a phenomenon discovered a decade ago between Hawaii and California that researchers say is likely to exist in other places around the globe.

“We found the great Atlantic garbage patch,” said Anna Cummins, who collected plastic samples on a sailing voyage in February.

The debris is harmful for fish, sea mammals — and at the top of the food chain, potentially humans — even though much of the plastic has broken into such tiny pieces they are nearly invisible.

Since there is no realistic way of cleaning the oceans, advocates say the key is to keep more plastic out by raising awareness and, wherever possible, challenging a throwaway culture that uses non-biodegradable materials for disposable products.

“Our job now is to let people know that plastic ocean pollution is a global problem — it unfortunately is not confined to a single patch,” Cummins said.

The research teams presented their findings in February at the 2010 Oceans Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon. While scientists have reported finding plastic in parts of the Atlantic since the 1970s, the researchers say they have taken important steps toward mapping the extent of the pollution.

Cummins and her husband, Marcus Eriksen, of Santa Monica, California, sailed across the Atlantic for their research project. They plan similar studies in the South Atlantic in November and the South Pacific next spring.

On the voyage from Bermuda to the Azores, they crossed the Sargasso Sea, an area bounded by ocean currents including the Gulf Stream. They took samples every 100 miles (160 kilometers) with one interruption caused by a major storm. Each time they pulled up the trawl, it was full of plastic.

A separate study by undergraduates with the Woods Hole, Massachusetts-based Sea Education Association collected more than 6,000 samples on trips between Canada and the Caribbean over two decades. The lead investigator, Kara Lavendar Law, said they found the highest concentrations of plastics between 22 and 38 degrees north latitude, an offshore patch equivalent to the area between roughly Cuba and Washington, D.C.

Long trails of seaweed, mixed with bottles, crates and other flotsam, drift in the still waters of the area, known as the North Atlantic Subtropical Convergence Zone. Cummins’ team even netted a Trigger fish trapped alive inside a plastic bucket.

But the most nettlesome trash is nearly invisible: countless specks of plastic, often smaller than pencil erasers, suspended near the surface of the deep blue Atlantic.

“It’s shocking to see it firsthand,” Cummins said. “Nothing compares to being out there. We’ve managed to leave our footprint really everywhere.”

Manning the Seas? Managed security services companies have been hired.  Fines are increasing for beach littering.  And the public campaigns for recycling are spread far and wide.  Yet, there still remains a gap between education and behavior, and unless these two line up in the minds of those who have a propensity to discard the critical importance of trashing the trash in its proper place, the situation is expected to worsen.  There are plenty of volunteers programs out there established to help address the issue, from options for being a volunteer Argentina, to the other side of the globe.  England volunteer programs, for example also address environmental concerns and they, too, have established programs to help address their own impact on the ocean’s and rivers and lakes and streams that their litter bugs feed.

Still more data are needed to assess the dimensions of the North Atlantic patch.

Charles Moore, an ocean researcher credited with discovering the Pacific garbage patch in 1997, said the Atlantic undoubtedly has comparable amounts of plastic. The east coast of the United States has more people and more rivers to funnel garbage into the sea. But since the Atlantic is stormier, debris there likely is more diffuse, he said.

Whatever the difference between the two regions, plastics are devastating the environment across the world, said Moore, whose Algalita Marine Research Foundation based in Long Beach, California, was among the sponsors for Cummins and Eriksen.

“Humanity’s plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint,” he said.

Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish: A paper cited by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says as many as 100,000 marine mammals could die trash-related deaths each year.

The plastic bits, which can be impossible for fish to distinguish from plankton, are dangerous in part because they sponge up potentially harmful chemicals that are also circulating in the ocean, said Jacqueline Savitz, a marine scientist at Oceana, an ocean conservation group based in Washington.

As much as 80 percent of marine debris comes from land, according to the United Nations Environmental Program.

The U.S. government is concerned the pollution could hurt its vital interests.

“That plastic has the potential to impact our resources and impact our economy,” said Lisa DiPinto, acting director of NOAA’s marine debris program. “It’s great to raise awareness so the public can see the plastics we use can eventually land in the ocean.”

DiPinto said the federal agency is co-sponsoring a new voyage this summer by the Sea Education Association to measure plastic pollution southeast of Bermuda. NOAA is also involved in research on the Pacific patch.

“Unfortunately, the kinds of things we use plastic for are the kinds of things we don’t dispose of carefully,” Savitz said. “We’ve got to use less of it, and if we’re going to use it, we have to make sure we dispose of it well.”

_______________________________

My Take: Either we take a solid look at our behavior or we can start creating that Online memorial to the environment.  Our trash is everywhere.  I’ve seen families leave everything from folding chairs and broken beach umbrellas, to empty organic multivitamins bottles on the sand at the end of a long summer day.  It’s absolutely heart breaking, not to mention infuriating.

But a lot of the trash and debris that hits the oceans comes from the sewers near the homes and on the streets where litterbugs live and work.  They toss trash out their car windows and into sewers without thinking twice about where it’s going to end up.  Too bad we couldn’t establish a better system for tracking and reporting litter bugs and getting the message to them that our oceans are one of our most precious resources and we need to do all we can to protect them.  I imagine it would be taking it to extremes to establish some sort of surveillance system on the beaches around the world to track the trash tossing.

I get that network security software is for the tech world, not the environmentalists.  But if we don’t do something drastic, make the consequences of littering more serious, we’ll pay different consequences of our own down the road, and so will our children and grandchildren. If we can figure out that whey protein is good for muscle tone, or cars can run on alcohol from potatoes, we can certainly figure out how to do a better job of managing our own debris.

————————————————————–

Other Resources

Getting the Message Out

Dry erase boards are a great way to track daily tasks and keep your family in touch.  Hang one in a hallway or on a kitchen wall and use it to track baseball practice schedules, dance recitals, keep a running grocery list, or post important phone numbers and reminders.