How often these days do you see an abandoned car on the side of the road? Fairly infrequently, and if you do there is usually a fluorescent-colored sticker on it indicating that the state or local authorities are preparing to safely tow it away. Abandoned cars, even those out of the flow of traffic, are a danger, right? The same attentive response cannot be guaranteed for abandoned boats across our nation’s waterways. With increasing frequency boats are becoming abandoned and derelict, and they have a negative impact on recreational boating and fishing, leisure activities, and the environment. Nothing ruins your day at the beach more than seeing an old, junked vessel on the horizon.
A vessel is abandoned in San Leandro Bay near Alameda. (Courtesy of Deborah Finney) via Oakland Tribune
A recent Oakland Tribune article highlights the challenge that many coastal communities face regarding abandoned and derelict vessels (ADVs). Local residents have undertaken the herculean effort to get two abandoned barges removed but have had no success at the local, state, or Federal level. Many local and state agencies lack the laws, staffing, expertise, or significant funding required to address ADVs, and Federal government agencies have strict mandates from Congress defining the roles they play in addressing this growing problem. This challenging reality was shown to be true in the case of the Davy Crockett, a 431-foot barge leaking fuel into the Columbia River and caught between not just Washington and Oregon, but between state and Federal responsibility.
Davy Crockett (Courtesy of Bruce Ely, The Oregonian)
The good news is that even though abandoned vessels continue to be a serious concern for coastal communities, many states are working through administrative difficulties to address this challenge. Proposed changes to Washington State legislation would protect local jurisdictions from liability resulting from derelict vessel removal. This would allow the local jurisdictions, which often have specialized background knowledge, to become more involved in protecting their waterways and marinas .
Private vehicles on the roadways usually all have insurance, a unique Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), and clear documentation of ownership, but the same is not always true for vessels in our nation’s waterways. Given the sheer (and growing) number of ADVs as well as the significant financial resources required to address them, how do we mitigate this significant economic and environmental problem? The next time I go to the beach, I sure hope I don’t see someone’s wrecked vessel ruining my view.
Image of the sea surface at 23.19425o N, 154.58109o W taken from aboard NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer during the EX1006 exploration cruise from Pearl Harbor, HI to San Francisco, CA which transited through the N. Pacific Subtopical High (aka E. Pacific garbage patch). The image was taken the afternoon of October 20, 2010 while the ship was conducting manta net sampling operations at a speed of 2-3 knots. Plastic particles can be seen in the image. Explanation of photo contents (colored circles and labels) provided by Miriam Goldstein. Image courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program
Miriam Goldstein of Scripps Institution of Oceanography recently sat down with the NOAA Marine Debris Program to talk about her October 2010 work aboard NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer during its EX1006 trans-Pacific cruise through what is commonly referred to as the “Eastern Garbage Patch” in the north Pacific ocean west of California.
About Miriam C. Goldstein:
Miriam C. Goldstein is a Ph.D. student in biological oceanography at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in Mark Ohman’s lab. She is currently working on the abundance and ecological effects of plastic debris in the North Pacific Central Gyre. In August 2009, she served as chief scientist on the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX), a 20-day expedition to study accumulation of plastic debris in the central Pacific. This Q&A took place following her work on the NOAA Okeanos Explorer’s cruise from Honolulu to San Francisco, which concluded in November 2010.
How did you become interested in this subject? About 3 years ago, I started seeing headlines about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” I became really intrigued and invited Marcus Eriksen of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation to speak at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where I am a graduate student. I found Dr. Eriksen’s talk fascinating and realized that there was lots of scientific work to do on this topic. So I got together with several other Scripps graduate students and wrote a grant to the UC Ship Funds to take one of the Scripps research vessels out to the North Pacific to look for plastic.
Have there been other scientific studies conducted in this part of the ocean before on plastics? Who did this and when did they take place? The Algalita Marine Research Foundation, founded by Charles Moore, has been going out there for about a decade. They are the ones who have really raised awareness of plastic in the open ocean. The Sea Education Association is an educational group that has been monitoring plastic in both the Atlantic and the Pacific from their tall ships for a number of years. They have a particularly nice dataset on plastic in the Atlantic, collected over 22 years and just recently published in Science. Project Kaisei is another nonprofit that went out to the North Pacific Central Gyre in 2009 (in collaboration with our group at Scripps) and again in 2010. Their mission is to find ways to clean up the plastic. This is definitely not a comprehensive list – thanks to the hard work of Charles Moore and his group in particular, there are now many conservation groups and scientists who are becoming interested in this issue.
What was unique or different about the October 2010 NOAA EX1006 trans-Pacific cruise from other(s) you’ve been on? I had never been on a NOAA ship before, and I am embarrassed to say that I had no idea that NOAA had a uniformed officer corps. I enjoyed learning about the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps and getting to know some of the officers and the paths their careers had taken. I had also never been on a bathymetric mapping ship before. It was incredibly cool to see how the mapping team used sonar to map the seafloor. They may have even discovered a new seamount or two!
What goes into deploying your equipment on a vessel as large as the Okeanos Explorer?
Every deployment requires a lot of teamwork! The manta tow is deployed on a piece of equipment called the “J-frame,” which allows us to pull the net on the starboard (right) side of the ship. In order to do this the officer in charge needs to slow down the ship, a trained person needs to operate the J-frame, and two people need to attach the net to the J-frame wire and make sure it enters and leaves the water correctly. Each team constantly talks to each other over the radio to make sure that everyone is coordinated. It takes about a half-hour to do one manta tow.
How many samples were you able to collect? We were able to do 40 manta tows. Some of the samples went to the NOAA Northwest Fisheries Science Center for chemical analysis, some went back to my lab at Scripps to count and measure the plastic, and a few stayed on the Okeanos Explorer for outreach and education.
What was the lab like aboard the Okeanos Explorer? There are three labs on the Okeanos Explorer – the wet lab, the dry lab, and the control room. Since I was working with plankton and seawater, it probably isn’t much of a surprise that I spent most of my time in the wet lab. Every time we did a tow, I would wash all the plankton into the end of the net, which is a removable part called a “cod end.” I would then take the cod end into the wet lab and wash the plastic and plankton into a jar. I would then fill the jar with ethyl alcohol, which preserves the plankton so that I can look at it in the lab back at Scripps. Preservation is absolutely necessary because rotting plankton is VERY unpleasant!
What did you use to collect the samples? Why the manta net? We collected two types of samples. We used the manta net to look at plastic on the ocean’s surface. The manta net captures what’s called the air-sea interface – the very top of the ocean. Past trips to the Gyre suggest that most of the plastic is floating up there. We also collected seawater in a bucket, then filtered it through very fine filters to see if we could find plastic particles that were too small to be captured by the manta net.
Were there specific collection protocols you followed for this cruise? Definitely! It is very important to collect samples the exact same way every time. That way, when we see changes in the amount or type of plastic, we can be sure that it is because something is happening in the ocean and not because we collected the samples in a different way.
What types of plastic samples were collected? I can’t answer this since we haven’t analyzed the samples yet.
Where can one find data from past samples collected in this area of the ocean? An arbitrary and very incomplete list…
Moore, C. J., S. L. Moore, M. K. Leecaster, and S. B. Weisberg. 2001. A comparison of plastic and plankton in the North Pacific central gyre. Marine Pollution Bulletin 42:1297-1300.
Pichel, W. G., J. H. Churnside, T. S. Veenstra, D. G. Foley, K. S. Friedman, R. E. Brainard, J. B. Nicoll, Q. Zheng, and P. Clemente-Colon. 2007. Marine debris collects within the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone. Marine Pollution Bulletin 54:1207-1211.
Shaw, D. G., and R. H. Day. 1994. Colour- and form-dependent loss of plastic micro-debris from the North Pacific Ocean. Marine Pollution Bulletin 28:39-43.
Venrick, E. L., T. W. Backman, W. C. Bartram, C. J. Platt, M. S. Thornhill, and R. E. Yates. 1973. Man-made objects on the surface of the central North Pacific ocean. Nature 241:271-271.
Wong, C. S., D. R. Green, and W. J. Cretney. 1974. Quantitative tar and plastic waste distributions in Pacific Ocean. Nature 247:30-32.
What was the most difficult part of your work on this cruise? Usually I get seasick for the first few days, and that’s never any fun. I was really lucky onboard the Okeanos Explorer – we had great weather, and for the first time ever, I didn’t feel sick at all! But the most difficult part was still anticipating that I would spend some time “feeding the fish.”
How will the samples be processed? We will sort the plastic out under a dissecting microscope, then use a specialized scanner called Zooscan to count and measure each piece. I’m working with NOAA and with Sea Education Association to find the best way to monitor plastic pollution.
What do you hope to find out from these samples? The cruise on board the Okeanos Explorer was a wonderful opportunity to look at plastic abundance in the fall. The North Pacific Central Gyre does undergo some seasonal changes, and we don’t have very much data from times other than the summer. So we’re really excited to see how the samples vary from season to season and year to year.
When do you think results might be available on your samples analysis? Do you plan to publish your results?
We will definitely do our best to get our findings out as fast as we can. The laboratory process does take time – collecting the samples is actually the easier part. We plan to publish in the scientific literature, as well as communicating our findings directly to the public through blogs like this one!
What would you say was the most surprising thing you discovered during your work on this vessel? I was really surprised how much the amount of plastic we found seemed to change with the season. This may be because of the wind – there is less wind in the summer, so all the plastic is floating right on the surface. During the Okeanos Explorer cruise there was more wind, so the plastic may have been mixed deeper, in the first six feet of water or so. Changes like this are why monitoring plastic is so important – if we don’t understand where the plastic is, it’s really hard to understand what its impact on marine ecosystems might be.
To Learn More About Miriam and her work check out the SEAPLEX website and her blog.
To learn more about the plastics research from the NOAA EX1006 cruise check out the Okeanos Explorer blog.
With the cruises for 2010 over and the ship at dock, we turn to the laboratories for the other half of EX1006 , also known as the Trans-Pacific Plankton Survey. Almost two weeks at sea (followed by three weeks at sea on EX1005) and a hard-working crew that was let loose on several crates of oceanographic equipment yields a good set of samples. That said, we are always craving more samples and stations because as excitement for the project builds, questions come up and ideas start flying. It’s why many of us love the work. That same excitement will stoke the fires and keep us going over the next several months of careful laboratory work and data analysis. We’ll try to provide updates along the way.
Here’s the rundown of the who, what, and why of the collections:
I. Microplastic samples – particles greater than 1/3 of a millimeter
Workshop attendees getting briefed on the manta-net during a quick trip on the water to sample for microplastics in Commencement Bay Photo Credit: Sherry Lippiatt
Phew, that was a lot of science! Members of the NOAA MDP just concluded the Second Research Workshop on Microplastic Debris at the Center for Urban Waters in Tacoma, WA — the center is housed in an amazing LEED certified green-building right off Commencement Bay that is outfitted with everything from dual flush toilets to a rain garden and a green roof… ok back to the meeting! The meeting brought about forty scientists together to talk about what has been accomplished since the last microplastics workshop, which was held in 2008. We heard about methods for measuring the concentration of microplastics in the environment, the effects of microplastics, and the degradation of plastics in the environment. I know, that’s a lot to take in! On the second afternoon, under the guidance of risk assessment expert Wayne Landis, the group took the first steps toward determining the risk that microplastics pose to the marine environment.
NOAA MDP's Courtney Arthur during Risk Assessment Break-out at SETAC Photo Credit: Sherry Lippiatt
Personally, as a newbie to plastics research I mostly sat back and absorbed the information being presented. But there is some pretty cool research being done, and it seems like everyone has their own niche to fill. This young field is constantly learning more about the interaction of plastics with marine organisms and toxic chemicals — stay tuned for future developments!
Special thanks to Courtney Arthur (NOAA MDP) and Joel Baker (University of Washington Tacoma) for coordinating the workshop.
Check out NOAA’s podcast about the Okeanos Explorer which just finished up its journey across thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean. Courtney talked a little about this cruise on her Oct. 28 post, but since this is such a hot topic of discussion, wanted to keep you updated on what happened and what is in the works.
The manta net is towed off the starboard side of the ship during its first deployment of the EX1006 cruise. Image courtesy of NOAA Ocean Explorer Program
Come back next week as we unveil our “Visiting Scientist/Blogger Series.” Topics to be discussed will span from sea mounts to plankton to plastics. Stay tuned!
Here at NOAA we don’t always have the opportunity to work together as much as we would like. But, sometimes, cool opportunities spring up really fast. So when some colleagues at the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) told the us that among other important work at sea, that they were going to sample surface waters for plastics out in the Pacific Ocean - well, there’s no other way to say it – we were totally psyched! A big thanks to NMFS for thinking of the Marine Debris Program!!!
The NOAA vessel Okeanos Explorer set out on its return trip to the mainland from Honolulu, HI on October 19 and will dock in San Francisco, CA on November 1, 2010. In addition to collecting lots of tiny plankton with something called a continuous plankton recorder, the scientists on the cruise are conducting three surface water trawls each day to assess the amount and composition of plastic in the North Pacific. That’s a lot of trawling!
Photo courtesy of NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program.
Analysis of the samples will take some time, especially for some of the fancy chemistry that will assess chemicals that may be attached to the plastics. But this project is one of the most comprehensive and scientific research expeditions that we have seen in this part of the world, and will hopefully help us better understand the portion of the North Pacific commonly referred to as the ”Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”
Enough of my blabbing – check out the OE blog (second to last paragraph) for cool info. and pictures!
Today is Blog Action Day 2010 and this year’s theme is (drum roll please) …WATER!
As the NOAA Marine Debris Program (MDP), we felt it important, no necessary, to post on this topic. We, of course, will be talking about the impacts of marine debris on our oceans.
As something that connects us all, water is a resource that everyone has a stake in protecting. And it so happens that MDP works to provide the public with and facilitate the sharing of marine debris-related information.
Though we don’t endorse the statistics quoted in this video (Contrary to what google comes up with, there is currently no comprehensive data confirming the actual size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.), this YouTube video is a humorous way of thinking about how one person’s trash can make its way to our oceans.
On a more serious note, if you have something to contribute to this discussion, feel free to leave a comment but better yet, come be a part of the solution at the 5th International Marine Debris Conference!
