LAT, part 4 of 5, "Altered Oceans": Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas

[DeepModem Mom]

ALTERED OCEANS
Plague of Plastic Chokes the Seas
On Midway Atoll, 40% of albatross chicks die, their bellies full of trash. Swirling masses of drifting debris pollute remote beaches and snare wildlife.
By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
August 2, 2006

...."This is pretty typical," said (John Klavitter, a wildlife biologist), who is stationed at the atoll for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. "We often find cigarette lighters, bucket handles, toothbrushes, syringes, toy soldiers — anything made out of plastic."

It's all part of a tide of plastic debris that has spread throughout the world's oceans, posing a lethal hazard to wildlife, even here, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest city.

Midway, an atoll halfway between North America and Japan, has no industrial centers, no fast-food joints with overflowing trash cans, and only a few dozen people.

Its isolation would seem to make it an ideal rookery for seabirds, especially Laysan albatross, which lay their eggs and hatch their young here each winter. For their first six months of life, the chicks depend entirely on their parents for nourishment. The adults forage at sea and bring back high-calorie takeout: a slurry of partly digested squid and flying-fish eggs.

As they scour the ocean surface for this sustenance, albatross encounter vast expanses of floating junk. They pick up all manner of plastic debris, mistaking it for food....

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean2aug02,0,3130914.story

[Ezlivin]

1. Out of sight, out of mind

The specter of a globe laid waste seems fanciful for the legions of us who never actually see the damage. Fisheries seriously depleted, mass coral bleaching, rain forests disappearing in Connecticut-sized chunks and a carbonating atmosphere.

Without seeing these things firsthand it is hard to comprehend the scope of the problem.

The overwhelmingly bad information that keeps coming makes this seem like a disaster movie gone awry. Except I have a bad feeling that the movie we find ourselves in has precious few heroes and no happy ending.

[Lisa]

2. Ebbesmeyer always has such cool projects ...

He's the guy who studies Pacific currents based on stuff washing ashore from container ships (spilled Nike shoes, etc.). Thanks for posting -- this is quite an incredible article.

"Albatross fly hundreds of miles in their search for food for their young. Their flight paths from Midway often take them over what is perhaps the world's largest dump: a slowly rotating mass of trash-laden water about twice the size of Texas.

This is known as the Eastern Garbage Patch, part of a system of currents called the North Pacific subtropical gyre. Located halfway between San Francisco and Hawaii, the garbage patch is an area of slack winds and sluggish currents where flotsam collects from around the Pacific, much like foam piling up in the calm center of a hot tub.

Curtis Ebbesmeyer has been studying the clockwise swirl of plastic debris so long, he talks about it as if he were tracking a beast.

"It moves around like a big animal without a leash," said Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer in Seattle and leading expert on currents and marine debris. "When it gets close to an island, the garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic.""

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Great with words, too. nt

[Lisa]

4. he's been known to publish poetry in science journals!

Yes, he sure can write.