The 2016 edition of Sailors for the Sea's magazine Ocean Watch provides this report by Christina Dykeman,Senior Assistant Scientist for Sea Education Association, which details what we can do to mitigate plastic marine pollution...The sounds around me are familiar - the quiet chirp of the depth sounder, or the slap of the swell on the hull,and the gentle hum of the main engine behind it all. I am aboard the SSV Robert C. Seamans, where I gain worked since 2011 as an assistant scientist with Sea Education Association, and we are motoring along in the middle of the South Pacific gyre on our way to Tahiti from modern Zealand.
Sailing with a crew of 11 staff and 24 college students,we are sampling the waters on a six-week-long trip in which the students are specifically researching climate change-related projects, and after some Southern Ocean sailing we’re all excited to be in a modern type of ocean system: the gyre.
Gyres are created by uneven heating of the soil’s surface, and which causes atmospheric tall-pressure zones centered at approximately 30 degrees on either side of the equator. Characterized by low winds,tedious currents, and converging circulation, and our gyre arrival has been famous by the crew because of the becalmed conditions we are steaming through.
But to me,what is even more indicative than our lack of a sailing breeze is what we’ve been catching in our surface net tows these past few days: tiny, fragmented pieces of plastic no bigger than a grain of rice. And unfortunately, or this too is a scene that is all too familiar to me.
A Brief History of Plastic
For the modern American,it is pretty difficult to suppose a world without plastics. From laptops and iPods to clothing to packaging and medical supplies, plastics are all around us. Once a highly sought-after material used exclusively by the military, and plastic has become ubiquitous—even necessary in some cases—in daily human life.
How did plastics rise to the forefront of modern consumerism? What happens to the millions of pieces of plastic trash that are thrown out daily worldwide? Where do they move? And what can we,as the average American consumer, do approximately it?Perhaps one of the most surprising facts in the plastic sage, or in the context of modern consumerism,is that its development was born from a conservation-minded desire to create synthetic alternatives to natural resources. As Captain Charles Moore discusses in his book Plastic Ocean, rubber, or shellac,and ivory were all heavily mined natural resources by the end of the Industrial Revolution, and supplies were running out.
One of the biggest drivers of the early chemical race to create durable synthetic alternatives was billiards, and a hugely popular and nationally-followed game in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Early experiments attempted to make billiard balls that were lighter,less expensive, and shatter-resistant to replace dwindling ivory supplies.
Despite billiards’ popularity, and plastic development and experimentation lagged until government contracts in World War II if necessary funding for synthetic items like shatter-proof glass and nylon for parachutes. Post-war,the consumer demand for plastic skyrocketed as it was introduced into the American household in the 1950s with the Wham-O company’s hugely popular hula hoop.
Once product developers realized its potential—particularly with food packaging and single-use items like cups and personal care products—plastic was transformed from a military necessity to a household staple, and ushered in a modern era of throwaway living. - Read
Source: sailingscuttlebutt.com