Fish are Friends not Garbage

The debris in the ocean make the fish sick and they eventually die. However, fish are important for the environment because their excretions "play a key role in maintaining the ocean's delicate pH balance" (www.newscientist.com). Bony fish excrete lumps of calcium carbonate known as "gut rocks". It plays a major part in buffering the carbon dioxide that acidifies the seawater. These gut rocks have a chemical structure that is very soluble in seawater. When fish drink salt water, they consume a lot of calcium, which causes them to excrete more or less calcium carbonate, depending on the size of the fish and the temperature of the water. Different environments are better for different fish but in general, "[f]or a given total mass of fish, smaller fish produce more then bigger fish, and fish at higher temperatures produce more than fish at lower temperatures" (www.newscientist.com). Warmer temperatures create the optimum environment for the most efficient calcium carbonate production. Therefore, as the temperature increases, so does the rate at which calcium carbonate is produced. Another problem besides the garbage killing the fish is over fishing. Over fishing is a concern because it depletes our food stock, which also results in a reduction of this valuable carbon buffer needed for our ocean and environment. This is important because some other marine animals build their external skeleton on calcium carbonate, which is excreted by fish.

The ocean and atmosphere are constantly in contact and any change in one of them directly affects the other. They share water, gases, and energy. Consequently, the pH of the ocean is important since it affects the carbon cycle. This cycle is a pathway to exchange carbon and there are four main reservoirs: the atmosphere, the terrestrial biosphere, the oceans, and sediments. Carbon is constantly being exchanged between the atmosphere and the ocean.

The series of reactions that CO₂ participates in when it enters the ocean are:

Solution:

• CO₂(atmospheric) ⇌ CO₂(dissolved)

Conversion to carbonic acid:

• CO₂(dissolved) + H₂O ⇌ H₂CO₃

First ionization:

• H₂CO₃ ⇌ H⁺ + HCO₃⁻ (bicarbonate ion)

Second ionization:

• HCO₃⁻ ⇌ H⁺ + CO₃⁻⁻ (carbonate ion)

The lack of fish in the ocean results in a decrease of the pH in the ocean, and then increase of carbon dioxide. This would mean that the ocean is acidic and it will lead to acid rain to faster decaying of buildings and it also damage trees. Acid rain weakens a tree and thus harming their leaves and limiting the nutrients that are available for them.

Plastic Problem- Legit and not Fake

If you are still not convinced that this garbage patch situation is serious, you better believe it, because it's twice the size of United States.
About 100 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year. Let's just discuss one product. This product has been present in the lives of many girls, and ever since 1959, has been made the perfect model to-be, and has even lived through criticism of creating a bad self-image for girls. You've probably guessed it. Yes, it's Barbie. From the curly-banged, retro looking model in 1959, to the brow-lifted, collagen-filled lips fifty years later, the company has no doubt created many models of Barbie. All this contributes to the statistics of 100 million tonnes of plastic being produced every year. Although Barbie is obviously not the only culprit to the problem, this example just shows that one product alone produces such a vast amount of plastic. Think of all the other companies out there, all producing products with plastic. That's a lot of plastic.
Statistics show that 10 percent of the 100 million tonnes of plastic result in the ocean, which translates to 10 million tonnes of plastic in the ocean every year.

As said before, the garbage that is dumped or swept into the ocean is a large problem, but the main problem is the photodegradation of plastic. What really happens is that plastic is photodegradable, which means that the plastic absorbs photons from sources like the sun and infrared radiation, which then enters the process of photodissociation, causing the plastic to break down into smaller particles. The reason why plastic is a bigger problem compared to other garbage is because most other flotsam (marine debris) are capable of biodegrading, but plastic photodegrades into smaller particles, and even breaks down into its polymers. The broken down plastic collects at the top of the water column, where it can be accessed by neustons (organisms that float on the surface of the water or live just below the surface), and mistaken for food. This causes plastic to be ingested into the digestive system of these organisms and cause them to die eventually.

Even though you may not see any visible flotsam in the water, you think, out of sight, out of mind, right? Not true. The photodegradation of the plastic causes it to photodisassociate and break down into particles maybe even too small to be visible by the naked human eye. As well, the United States alone produces about 27 million tonnes of nurdles (small, plastic pellets) every year. Nurdles can also be formed from plastic broken down into smaller pieces. Nurdles are also known as "mermaid tears," which sounds all good and dandy, but it's really not. This is especially harmful to the filter-feeders in the water, like: jellyfish, clams, and krill, because the plastic can act as a sponge that soaks up more toxic substances than normal, impairing their function to filter the water and filter the ocean water and even causing death.

Garbage in the Ocean, Something's Fishy.

The collection of garbage in gyres is due to the currents of the Pacific Ocean. Of these wastes, 80% comes from the land and 20% are thrown off of ship or oil platforms.

The garbage in the ocean ends up being eaten by the animals in the sea, such as fish and turtles. Although the garbage is in the ocean, it also affects birds seabirds because their source of food is in the ocean where all the garbage is. Hence, they end up eating the garbage instead of their intended meal. As a result, "[s]yringes, cigarette lighters, and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food" (Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel Howden). The UN Environment Programme have found that "plastic debris cause the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more then 100,000 marine mammals" (Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel Howden).

Often fish and other sea animals are deceived by plastic because the floating particles resemble zooplankton, which leads the the plastic particle are mistaken as food and is being consumed by jellyfish, therefore entering the ocean food chain. Plastic can never be digested because of the nature of its chemical bonds and its high molecular weight. Not only does it not provide nutrients, but plastic makes the fish feel full even though they are not consuming food. Investigations have shown that plastic in birds prevent migration, reproduction, and ultimately cause starvation and later death. If no reproduction is occurring, then as the birds die, they will become extinct. In turtles, plastic blocks their intestines and also causes them to float. Thus, they are unable to dive underwater to eat food. Plastic is like ghost fishermen and the animals get entangled in these plastic nets. If the animals die because of ingested plastic, they decay and since the plastic doesn't get digested, it is still present. After the animal decays, the leftover plastic gets washed back into the ocean and it is ready to kill another marine animal.

The toxic chemicals from the debris also make the marine animals sick. Toxic chemicals are released from "plastic sectors" are harmful to animals and humans as well.

Garbage in Gyres

You might be thinking, how does all that garbage stay in the same place, especially in the North Pacific Gyre. Shouldn't the garbage diffuse into the rest of the ocean so that there is just a little bit of garbage everywhere, but not so much that it's unmanageable? The answer is no, because of the characteristics of a gyre. Gyres rotate and become almost like a whirlpool; once you're in, it's hard to get out. A good way to picture it is to imagine the garbage as foam piled up in the middle of a hot tub where it is the calmest. The garbage can't even fight its way out like a human can.

Our main contact, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, has told us: "The garbage patch is localed under the subtropical high pressure cell. Dynamics of the winds and currents beneath the cell cause flotsam to converge into the patch." This high is called the North Pacific subtropical high and it pushes storms north or south. This high is the eye of the North Pacific Gyre and it consists of weak winds and slow currents just naturally collect marine debris, flotsam. In actuality, because similar wind and current configurations occur in all major oceans, so every large body of water has this problem of having a trash vortex. Not a lot of people know about this problem because that area of the Pacific Ocean is not frequently travelled. 70% of marine litter sinks and the ligher plastic photodegrades into smaller components which cannot be seen unless you're on a boat right on top of all the garbage, which is highly unlikely for an ordinary citizen.

Anyways, garbage accumulates in the ocean in these gyres and us silly humans continue dumping trash into the ocean off boats and land. As you might have read in previous blogs by my other group members, it takes 450 years for a plastic bottle to fully photodegrade but they never ever biodegrade. Plastic bottles aren't even the worst thing that people throw into the ocean. Disposable diapers apparently take 500 years to become invisible to the human eye but the effect on the environment can be seen much longer than that.

In certain areas, ocean currents carry the garbage, concentrate it in one area, and prevent it from washing ashore, especially in the circulating currents in stable weather conditions. In the image above, it can be seen that it is in between the two gyres where there is both warm and cold water that most garbage is collected. In each of the smaller gyres, the garbage moves toward the other gyre. But storms and rain can wash out some of the garbage out of the edges of the gyre and onto the beaches and shorelines of nearby Hawaiian islands that are in the same general area. This is often referred to as "a big animal without a leash. When it gets close to an island, the garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," said Ebbesmeyer.

http://viewfromthemountain.typepad.com/david_sobotta_weblog/2006/08/the_eastern_gar.html
http://www.howstuffworks.com
http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/trashing-our-oceans
www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Trashing-Oceans-Plastic4nov02.htm

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.