Garbage piling up beneath Monterey Bay, says MBARI

Posted:   06/05/2013 By Jason Hoppin in the Santa Cruz Sentinel

Click photo to enlarge

A young rockfish hides in a discarded shoe 1,548 feet deep in San Gabriel... ( (c) 2010 MBARI )

MOSS LANDING -- Look out across Monterey Bay, and one hardly thinks of a junkyard. But below the surface, decades of garbage have been piling up, a new study by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute shows.

Go 1,000 meters down, and it's still there. Go a mile down, it's still there. Go two miles down and beyond -- down to the limits of scientific exploration -- and it's still there. Old boots, tires, fishing gear and especially plastic, litter the ocean floor.

"Once it gets in the ocean, it's not going to get cleaned up," said Susan von Thun, a senior research technician at MBARI. "Especially with plastic or metal, it doesn't really break down. It'll be there for possibly thousands of years."

The study is based on 22 years of deep-sea video accumulated and cataloged by marine researchers. They decided to search their database and came up with more than 1,150 hits for human-produced garbage in the Monterey Bay region alone, much of it within the boundaries of a national marine sanctuary.

While there have been some eye-popping finds -- a shipping container full of 10,000 steel-belted tires lies at the bottom of the bay -- about a third of the findings were plastic, with about half of those being plastic bags.

PLASTIC POLLUTION

That goes to the heart of an ongoing debate about single-use plastic bags, with the plastics industry recently helping defeat a proposed statewide bag ban, as well as a second bill, by Assemblymember Mark Stone, D-Scotts Valley, aimed at getting plastics producers to help cut back on pollution.

When the bag ban was defeated by three votes, the industry group American Progressive Bag Alliance hailed its victory, saying the proposal was based on "unfounded stats, junk science and myths."

Dave Asselin, executive director of the American Progressive Bag Alliance, reiterated the group's position in a statement Wednesday.

"We have not had a chance to review this particular study, but we do know that the rationale behind efforts to ban or tax plastic bags is largely based off of junk science and exaggerations," Asselin said.

The study is far more exhaustive that any prior examination of debris on the ocean floor, with MBARI's submarines routinely plumbing depths rarely seen by human eyes. Whether it makes a difference in the political debate about plastic bags remains to be seen. Wednesday, Stone held a previously scheduled legislative hearing that dealt with plastics and the marine environment.

Laura Kasa, executive director of Santa Cruz-based Save Our Shores, a group that holds beach cleanups throughout the region, said the study is another sign that plastic bags need to be banned.

"This is why it's so important that we prevent trash that people leave on the beach from getting into the ocean," Kasa said. "If one person doesn't think that it makes a difference, if they leave their piece of trash on the beach, they're wrong. It'll end up in the bottom of the ocean."

Von Thun said researchers combed through video for instances where marine life interacted with plastic and found several. They include plastic bags wrapped around deep coral -- which eventually will kill the coral -- and debris serving as habitat for anemonies and other marine life, giving them a home in areas they would not normally settle.

The study also found plastics and metals were more likely to be found in deeper waters, and researchers speculated that because Monterey Bay is a national sanctuary and subject to heightened environmental protections, it is likely that oceans elsewhere have a more significant problem.

"I was surprised that we saw so much trash in deeper water. We don't usually think of our daily activities as affecting life two miles deep in the ocean," said Kyra Schlining, the study's lead author. "I'm sure that there's a lot more debris in the canyon that we're not seeing."

Follow Sentinel reporter Jason Hoppin at Twitter.com/scnewsdude

Read another article about the Monterey Bay Findings in Mother Earth News:
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/wilderness-resources/stories/trash-that-litters-ocean-floor-is-mostly-recyclables

Floating tsunami trash to be a decades-long headache

posted in the News Straits Times March 8, 2013

PARIS: The tsunami that ravaged northeast Japan in March 2011 created the biggest single dumping of rubbish, sweeping some five million tonnes of shattered buildings, cars, household goods and other rubble into the sea.

About three-and-a-half million tonnes, according to official Japanese  estimates, sank immediately, leaving some 1.5 million tonnes of plastic,  timber, fishing nets, shipping containers, industrial scrap and innumerable  other objects to float deeper into the ocean.

Marine experts poring over the disaster say the floating trash adds  significantly to the Pacific’s already worrying pollution problem.

For many years, and possibly decades, items will be a hazard for shipping,  a risk for sea mammals, turtles and birds, a hitchhiking invitation for  invasive species and a poorly understood threat to wildlife through plastic  micro-particles.

“In a single stroke, the tsunami dumped 3,200 times the amount of rubbish  that Japan discharges annually into the Pacific,” said Robin des Bois, a French  environmental group that is studying the problem.

“In plastic alone, the volume is the equivalent to several decades of  accumulated waste in the Atlantic and Pacific.”    Early last year, the first debris started to wash up on shores of Oregon,  Washington and southern Alaska and the Canadian province of British Columbia.

They were foam and buoys that have “high windage”, meaning objects that sit  proud of the waves and are easily pushed by the wind.

They were followed by other items that sometimes spoke poignantly of the  disaster on the other side of the ocean.

They included a Harley-Davidson motorbike in a container, a football with  the owner’s name on it, a crewless ship and two massive concrete docks on  styrofoam floats.

The docks came from the fishing port of Misawa in Aomori prefecture, yet  washed up in Oregon and Washington eight months apart. One dock was rinsed down  with bleach as a bio-precaution after it was found to be studded with dozens of  foreign species of algae and barnacles.

The docks’ odyssey may explain why, contrary to some expectations, there  has been no massive landfall of debris.

“NOAA’s data suggests that the debris is no longer in a mass or a patch,”  said Sherry Lippiatt, regional coordinator in California for the US National  Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s marine debris programme.

“Rather, it has spread out across the vast North Pacific Ocean since it was  introduced nearly two years ago.”    Indeed, exactly where the trash is and how much remains is unclear.

Much may have sunk or become waterlogged, and scattering means there are no  more clusters to be monitored by plane or satellite.

Sightings by passing vessels or fishermen, along with computer models,  suggest the bulk of slower-moving debris is located north and east of Hawaii.

Simon Boxall of Britain’s National Oceanographic Centre pointed to a  circular current, called a gyre, that loops slowly around the North Pacific.

“It heads across the Pacific towards North America, goes down alongside the  California coast and then comes round, taking about six or seven years to get  back to Japan,” he said.

“Most of the debris will follow the gyre,” eventually getting trapped in  the centre of the vortex in the so-called Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii  and California, he said. “Some of it could stay for the next 30, 40 years.” Debris in the gyre’s northern part tends to split off and head towards the  coastline of North America, said Boxall.

It means beach walkers are likely to encounter a disturbing but relentless  flow of flotsam for years to come.
“Most of it is pretty harmless,” reassured Boxall, adding that any  radioactive material from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant was “obviously”  an exception.

“Any oils would have been broken down in the open ocean a long time ago,  and most of the chemistry will have been dispersed. Big objects, though, may  pose a navigational hazard,” he said.

A big question mark remains over plastic items that have been degraded to  microparticles, Boxall added.
Previous studies on species of North Sea mussels and fish suggest these  particles are swallowed by some marine animals and remain in their digestive  tracts.

Francois Galgani of France’s Ifremer marine research institute said that “absolutely nothing” was known about the risk from nanoparticles, or  microparticles that degrade into yet smaller pieces just billionths of a metre  across.

“Another problem is the risk of invasive species and debris that has sunk,”  he said.

“We don’t know much about the currents in the deep ocean, but my bet is  that there are bound to be places in the depths where the trash is building up.” -- AFP

Read more: Floating tsunami trash to be a decades-long headache - Latest - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/latest/floating-tsunami-trash-to-be-a-decades-long-headache-1.230941#ixzz2NGfxqkp1

Eugene Considers a Plastic Bag Ban

Posted in the Eugene Daily News on Sept. 17th, 2012

By Adam Chimeo for Eugene Daily News

 On September 17th, the Eugene City Council will meet to determine whether residents of Eugene are ready to ban the plastic bag.

On September 17th, the Eugene City Council will meet to determine whether residents of Eugene are ready to ban the plastic bag. The public hearing is a continuation of a discussion established during July’s hearing regarding the execution of the proposed ban. Though the majority of citizens seem to support the idea, the public hearings have managed to stir up heated debates as to whether we should follow the Portland or Corvallis method.

The Portland method
Portland has led the state in the movement to ban the bag. In an open letter to the citizens of Portland, Mayor Sam Adams addressed the impact of the plastic bag in Oregon:

“Growing up on the Oregon coast, I saw firsthand the devastating effects that discarded plastic has on our waterways and wildlife. In Portland, and in all of Oregon, single-use plastic checkout bags are an eyesore, getting into our waterways and our storm drains. Plastic bags are a nuisance, jamming up recycling facility machines and costing those facilities tens of thousands of dollars a month in maintenance and labor to fix the mess.”

Enacted October 1st, 2011, Portland’s plastic bag prohibition specifically targeted supermarkets with $2 million or more in gross annual sales and stores with pharmacies with at least 10,000 square feet of space. By focusing on larger stores like Target and Walmart, Mayor Adams hopes to drastically reduce the amount of trash throughout the city.

A survey conducted by Environment Oregon, a non-profit environmental advocacy group based in Portland, has recorded 8.5 million plastic bags eliminated from the waste stream per month. However, many Portlanders are claiming that the plastic ban has simply switched our dependence from plastic to paper. Sarah Higginbotham, Director of the Environment Oregon Research & Policy Center, says,

Protestors in Portland demonstrate against single-use plastic bags. 

Enacted October 1st, 2011, Portland’s plastic bag prohibition specifically targeted supermarkets with $2 million or more in gross annual sales.

“Although the current ban was a great start, it did not go far enough. Portland banned single-use plastic bags from major grocery stores and retailers, but a stricter bag ban is necessary to reduce more plastic bag consumption and to address the use of paper bags.”

The Corvallis method
Corvallis has also banned the single-use plastic bag, although their plan differs slightly from the Portland method. After a heated city council meeting that took place on July 3rd, the citizens of Corvallis added an amendment requiring businesses to impose a pass-through fee of five cents or more on grocery bags made of paper. This was done to motivate shoppers to make the switch to reusable bags.

Higginbotham hopes to enact a similar pass-through fee in her own city:

“Based on experiences in other cities, we know that paper bag usage will increase if there isn’t a disincentive placed on paper bags in addition to a ban on plastic bags. It has been shown that with a small fee on the use of paper bags, consumers shift significantly to reusable bags.”

Though alternative bagging options are becoming increasingly popular, a large majority of consumers still prefer the convenience of plastic. Sure, customers may be aware of the environmental damage of plastic bags when they go shopping, but without an extra push, most people will not go through the trouble of bringing multiple reusable bags from home. This happens no matter how menial the task may sound on paper.

Without an extra push, most people will not go through the trouble of bringing multiple reusable bags from home.

Andrew Roll is a fourth-year student at the University of Oregon. He is one of many people who worry about the environmental repercussions of a society running on plastic. Roll says,

“Bags are everywhere. When I go heavy-duty grocery shopping and forget my reusable bags at home I find myself with no other option but to go with the plastic.”

Many Eugenians are finding themselves in this exact situation at the grocery store. Roll continues, “And it’s not just the bags. It’s everything. Everything is wrapped in plastic. You can’t get away from it. I mean, I usually return my bags to the store every other month or so for recycling, but it feels like a drop in the bucket.”

Drop in the bucket, or drop in the ocean?

Proponents of the plastic bag ban have expressed concerns regarding the amount of trash in the ocean. The overabundance of plastic has led to an influx in marine litter. After a short while adrift, the plastic photodegrades into miniscule, microscopic pieces.  This photodegradation begins an environmentally devastating process in which small fish and other wildlife digest the harmful plastic, which in turn introduces it to the diet of the larger animals; thus creating a domino effect throughout the entire food chain.

A more visible representation of the ocean’s plastic woes is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: a gyre located in the central North Pacific Ocean contaminated with marine litter. Though the size of the garbage patch is still being debated, research sponsored by the National Science Foundation suggests that the affected area may be twice the size of Hawaii and its presence has awoken many to the notion of irreversible oceanic damage.

Higginbotham says that a plastic bag ban in Eugene can directly help counter marine litter:

The overabundance of plastic has led to an influx in marine litter.

“The City of Eugene estimates the public uses 67 million plastic bags a year. A bag ban in Eugene will allow the city to stand up for protecting Oregon’s coasts and the Pacific Ocean. In addition, plastic bags are an expensive nuisance for our co-mingled recycling centers in Oregon. Plastic is the most common type of marine debris worldwide, and comprises up to 90% of floating marine debris.”

Is Eugene ready to trash the plastic bag?

The idea has begun to pick up steam, though many are still debating how the proposed ban would be executed as well as whether a paper bag tax should be included. Unfortunately, banning plastic bags would not be enough to stop the whole problem. Next time you stroll through the grocery store, take note of how many items are wrapped in some sort of plastic container — or perhaps it would be easier to look for the things that are not.

Cities like Portland, Corvallis, San Francisco, Washington D.C., and as of recently, the entire state of Hawaii have all recognized the threat of plastic in our local ecosystems. There is also an enormous amount of oil, energy, and finances that go into the production of this convenience that could easily be avoided and then diverted to better causes.

So what will the future hold for Eugene? Paper? Plastic? Or something else?

Seabird study finds Pacific plastic trash on the rise

posted in the Global Post.com by Faine Greenwood July 9, 201

A seagull flies near the Golden Gate Bridge on May 24, 2012 in San Francisco, California. (Justin Sullivan /AFP/Getty Images)

Plastic pollution is on the rise in the Pacific Northwest, and seabirds and other ocean-dependent wildlife stand to lose the most, a new study has found.

Scientists tested the stomach contents of beached northern fulmars (an abundant, gull-like seabird) in British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington state to come to their conclusions about Pacifc Northwest pollution levels.

The study, conducted between 2009 and 2010 and published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin, found that 92.5% of beached northern fulmars sampled had some amount of plastic in their digestive tracts. One bird had a whopping 454 pieces of plastic in its stomach.

More from GlobalPost: Plastic garbage in the ocean: There's more of it than previously estimated, report says

UBC's findings indicate that plastic levels in the Pacific ocean appear to have risen considerably, when compared to previous studies of a similar nature.

“Like the canary in the coal mine, northern fulmars are sentinels of plastic pollution in our oceans,” said Stephanie Avery-Gomm, lead author of the study, in an article on University of British Columbia's website.

“Their stomach content provides a ‘snapshot’ sample of plastic pollution from a large area of the northern Pacific Ocean.”

The researchers hope to begin monitoring plastic pollution trends on an annual basis, according to UBC.

Seabirds are notorious for their willingness to eat just about anything, including bottle caps, toothbrushes, and plastic bags. A Monterey Bay aquarium study found 97.5% of albatross chicks on a North Pacific island had plastic in their stomachs.

Seabirds aren't the only animals affected by the ever-increasing amount of plastic bobbing in world seas: plastic marine trash is thought to affect 267 species worldwide, according to a 2002 study published in the Marine Pollution Bulletin. 

Those numbers include 86 percent of all sea turtle species, 44 percent of all sea bird species, and 43 percent of marine mammal species - and the real numbers may be concealed by the inherent difficulty of observing marine wildlife.

More from GlobalPost: Hawaii becomes first state to ban plastic bags

A 2010 study described in ScienceDaily documented a disturbing-sounding "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," an area of the sea with much greater than average amounts of free-floating plastic junk. Oft-repeated reports that the patch is as big as Texas are, however, false, according to a Oregon State University expert.
The Monterey Bay Aquarium suggests sea-life conscious consumers limit their use of disposable plastic products, avoid styrofoam, and recycle as often as possible, among other eco-friendly suggestions.