Troubled Water

This past Thursday night we had the chance to be a part of an amazing educational experience courtesy of LA Green Drinks. Thanks to the efforts of LA Green Drinks organizer Barent Roth and the good folks at Living Green, host of Culver City's monthly event, members of the research vessel Alguita were on hand to discuss their recent voyage and its amazing findings.

Anna Cummins and Marcus Eriksen, along with four colleagues, spent four weeks this past January and February sailing the Pacific Ocean, and more specifically, the northeast portion of a giant gyre that inhabits it. A gyre is a huge, swirling area of ocean created by clashing currents. There are nine gyres around the world with the one they researched called the North Pacific Gyre.

While gyres are an important ecological phenomena that circulate water, and with it food, between coasts and throughout oceans, they also form vast traps for human debris, specifically plastic.

Collecting plastic samples from the North Pacific Gyre, the crew was dismayed to find that the polluted area has grown to twice the area of the United States and is expanding at a mind-boggling rate. Currently it's estimated that the gyre contains 3.5 million tons of plastic, half of it floating on the surface and half sitting on the ocean floor.

The couple (who actually became engaged on the deck of the Alguita while at sea) presented samples of their findings, ranging from soda bottles to fishing line to an action figure arm, all coming from a variety of Pacific coastal regions including California, Alaska and Japan.

Unfortunately, Eriksen noted, there's nothing that can be done to remove the expansive plastic soup. Instead our focus must be on enacting legislation to stop more plastic from going into the sea. China is already banning the use of plastic bags and similar bans are beginning to take effect here in the U.S.

Eriksen is working to raise awareness of our collective need to limit our plastic consumption by sailing a raft made from used plastic bottles from Long Beach, California to Hilo, Hawaii this May. We'll be sure to keep you updated on his remarkable voyage and help spread the message of the crew of the Alguita.