Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Our Main Man

We have Curtis Ebbesmeyer as our main contact. He was contacted by Charles Moore after he first found the Pacific Trash Vortex after a yacht race. Ebbesmeyer is an American oceanographer who graduated with a Phd at the University of Washington. He now studies the movement of flotsam in his retirement. His interest of ocean current movements was first carried out by dropping buoys into the ocean and tracking them. But in May 1990, the ship Hansa Carrier dropped a container containing eighty thousand Nike sneakers in to the ocean. He used this seemingly harmful circumstance and turned it into something productive by using those as buoys to monitor ocean currents. In this way, he can use trash as monitors and find out where the flotsam is going and its path. This helps cleanup crews more easily find where they need to focus their ships to. He now has a network of beachcombers who inform him of recent incidences of things falling into the ocean.

He uses OSCURS (Ocean Surface Currents Simulation), a computer simulator developed by Seattle oceanographer Jim Ingraham, to track the oceanic movement of all kinds of flotsam. Currently Mr. Ebbesmeyer is working with Evans-Hamilton Inc., an oceanography company that focuses on physical oceanography services, meteorological conditions, and application of marine and freshwater instrumentation.

The Coriolis Effect

As promised, the Coriolis Effect will now be explained. Air moves because of the pressure gradient force and it gets offtrack from its original path. In terms of physics, moving objects appear to be deflected (travel in a curve and not in a straight line) but in reality they are not. The reason it appears that the object curves is because of the Earth's rotation. And since the North Pacific Gyre is above the equator, objects in the ocean's gyres move to the right as earlier stated, while gyres south of the equator move towards the left. The reason why objects north of the equator move to the right is because the air moves from high to low pressure. The faster the air moves and the closer to the North or South Pole, the more the object seems to deflect. The North Pacific Gyre is relatively close to the North Pole. The Coriolis Effect is the cause of cyclones and tornadoes. When the pressure gradient force and the Coriolis force is balanced, the low pressure system will rotate.
This diagram shows the Coriolis force in the north hemisphere, like the gyre we are focusing on. It shows how the gyre is rotating counterclockwise in low pressure area. The blue lines represent the pressure gradient force and the red lines symbolize the Coriolis acceleration. But while the North Pacific Gyre is going counterclockwise, the gyre below it, the South Pacific Subtropical Gyre is going clockwise because it is below the equator and the equator acts a reflection line to create a mirror image. These two gyres interact near the equator, and objects in each one may be pulled out by the other gyre's rotations and inertia it has.

These objects that I keep mentioning, that is garbage in the ocean. Yes, garbage is circulating around and around the ocean in the gyres. The North Pacific Gyre is simply the most noted and famous one for all the garbage floating in it.

Charles Moore, the first man to see and react to the proclaimed 'Eastern Garbage Patch' said, “there were shampoo caps and soap bottles and plastic bags and fishing floats as far as I could see. Here I was in the middle of the ocean, and there was nowhere I could go to avoid the plastic.”

Next post will finally talk about how these gyres in the ocean are trapping all that garbage. Stay tuned!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coriolis_effect
http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/mtr/fw/crls.rxml

"Glad Man" step aside-Moore is the real thing

Charles Moore is an oceanologist and first caught sight of the garbage problem, especially the vast amount of plastic present in the ocean in 1997. He and his crew were making their way home to California through the North Pacific subtropical gyre when he encountered this dilemma. It is not usually a common route taken by fishermen because the lack of nutrients creates a poor environment for fish, and sailors often avoid it because it lacks wind to propel their sails. Moore estimated that "there was half a pound of plastic debris for every hundred square meters of sea surface. Multiplying this by the circular area defined by our roughly thousand-mile course through the gyre, the weight of the debris totaled about 3 million tons." The ocean was probably chosen as a dumping ground since it seems so large and never-ending, but the plastic that has accumlated has created a "plastic soup," and now is effecting our very ecosystem. Moore founded the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in 1994, dedicated to restoring the marine environment.

So when it comes to garbage, the white-haired spokesperson of the "Glad" company should step aside, because Moore is the real garbage expert here.

Ocean Garborator?

Gyres in the ocean are circular or spiralling motions caused by circular ocean surface current. These swirling vortexes are caused mainly by the global wind system and the continents surround the main gyres so they stay in that area. The circulation patterns from the wind curl is determined by the planetary vorticity and friction in both horizontal and vertical directions. The wind curl involves torque which is pretty much the inclination of a force to rotate an object around an axis like a lever fulcrum or pivot. In other words, torque is like a twist just like force is a push or pull. The wind curls in circles, causing the waters in a certain part of the ocean to always be in the same general area. In a way like how the tide goes in but goes back out by the shores, the ocean currents occur throughout the ocean. The Coriolis effect, to be explained in a later blog, is another reason why there are ocean gyres. The picture below is of the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. It can be seen that the arrows indicating the direction of the different ocean currents like the North Pacific Drift and the North Equatorial Current and the smaller currents form a circle that goes around and around in a clockwise motion. These gyres are like vortexes where once something enters into a gyre, only storms and really strong winds can cause it to exit.
Because of the swirling movement of all the gyres in the first picture at the top, even if something can escape the circular motion of one gyre then it will most likely go to the next closest one just because of the relationship of all the gyres and each of their different rotations gets interlaced.

Our focus is on the North Pacific Gyre because it is one of the larger gyres. The area in which it is located is also a factor because it is between Asia and North America, the two busiest in importing and exporting continents with their many businesses and factories. Goods are often shipped by vessels and watercrafts like boats. Apparently these boats are a major factor of litter in the ocean. More to come on what the interaction is between gyres and garbage!

"As trash swirls through the world’s oceans to a handful of vortexes like this, it leaves a trail of death and destruction along its path." - from www.oceans.greenpeace.org

www.thefreedictionary.com/gyre
www.algalita.org/pdf/plastics%20are%20forever%20english.pdf
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/gyre
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/10/texas-sized-garbage-patch-threatens-pacific-marine-sanctuary.ars.

Where It All Began

Ever since there have been humans sailing the seas or living along the sea shores, there has been garbage discarded into the rivers or seas that eventually lead to oceans. The number of debris in the ocean has greatly increased since the 1940s as a result of a greater use of plastic. It has resulted in a great amount of imperishable trash floating in the ocean. Some are stuck in gyres and other are eventually washed onto the shores of beaches.

There are many irresponsible people in the world and when they bring things to the beaches, they leave their residue on the beach. This residue, is later washed into the ocean when the tide comes in and takes the waste along with it. Garbage has also been deliberately and accidentally thrown into the sea off of ships.

Our goal is to present possible solutions to the increase of grabge in the thrown into the North Pacific Gyres in the 1940s.

Welcome!

Hi Everyone,

Welcome to our blog! We're a bunch of IB students, and part of this two year embarkment, we are required to complete a science research project. Our team members are part of the different sciences to provide diversity: chemistry, physics, and biology. Our Group Four project is basically on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the effect it has on our environment. With our different background knowledge from the diverse areas of science, we are going to give you the full story on how the Great Pacific Garbage Patch affects the world, chemically, physically, and biologically as well.

We are going to discuss the various implications provided with the disposing of trash irresponsibly, and how we can make a difference by being a little more responsible with the way we approach garbage disposal and caring for the environment.

Also known as the "trash vortex," it is located in Pacific Ocean, and stretches from Hawaii to Japan. What happens is that garbage is trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre, and that poses to be a problem for the environment and marine life. As plastic photodegrades, the small particles can be ingested by neustons or other aquatic organisms, therefore harming them.
Not only does this harm the aquatic life and marine organisms, it also has an effect on us. Throughout this project, we will be discussing the situation of the trash vortex, its effects on the environment and people, and how we can help to improve this dilemma.