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Isn’t natural history TV wonderful? - as an avid armchair adventurer I regularly marvel at the brilliant television programmes delivered by heroes such as David Attenborough — the natural world is truly a wonder to behold.

But there is another story that needs to be told & a new David to tell it.

David de Rothschild is about to embark on an epic adventure across the unimaginable expanse of the Pacific Ocean to help us understand this other “Blue Planet” — and he is doing this in a boat predominantly made of plastic bottles (our plastic trash).

Why? you may ask ... as I certainly did when we first discussed the possibilities of this adventure whilst helping to develop the “Adventure Ecology Prospectus” in 2006. The answer; “There is another Blue Planet that many people are unaware of and this story has human footprints stamped all over the ‘picture perfect postcard’ that many have of our remote natural world.”

“At an obvious level the industrial and agricultural waste we produce are destroying our coastal environments, however the impact of human activity extends well beyond the immediate coastal zone into the open sea (where the fishing industry operates), even the deep, deep oceans are not safe and an incredible (almost unimaginable) example of this is the Eastern Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Ocean.”

So I’m now hooked —“what is this Eastern Garbage Patch?”

This is the real ‘Blue Planet’

Like other areas of concentrated marine debris in the world's oceans, the Eastern Garbage Patch has formed gradually over time as a result of marine pollution gathered by the action of oceanic currents.

The garbage patch occupies a large and relatively stationary region of the North Pacific Ocean bound by the North Pacific Gyre (a remote area commonly referred to as the horse latitudes). The rotational pattern created by the North Pacific Gyre draws in waste material from across the North Pacific Ocean, including the coastal waters off North America and Japan. As material is captured in the currents, wind-driven surface currents gradually move floating debris toward the centre, trapping it in the region.

The size of the affected region is unknown, but estimates range from 700,000 km2 to more than 15 million km2, (0.41% to 8.1% of the size of the Pacific Ocean). The area may contain over 100 million tons of debris.

Plastic photodegradation in the ocean
The Eastern Garbage Patch has one of the highest levels of plastic particulate suspended in the upper water column. As a result, it is one of several oceanic regions where researchers have studied the effects and impact of plastic photodegradation in the neustonic layer of water. Unlike debris which biodegrades, the photodegraded plastic disintegrates into ever smaller pieces while remaining a polymer. This process continues down to the molecular level.

As the plastic flotsam photodegrades into smaller and smaller pieces, it concentrates in the upper water column. As it disintegrates, the plastic ultimately becomes small enough to be ingested by aquatic organisms which reside near the ocean's surface. Plastic waste thus enters the food chain through its intense concentration in the neuston.

wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch

Curious? If so follow The Plastiki Expedition. Hopefully the Plastiki will get wet before the end of the year, but as the technology being used/developed for the catamaran is a bit radical they’re not rushing out into the middle of the Pacific until reasonably certain that the boat will remain glued together for more than a few weeks! | Top |