August 27, 2009

Researchers return from garbage patch with samples

By Mike Lee
Union-Tribune Staff Writer

Fresh from a 20-day voyage to aTexas-size vortex of plastic trash called the Great Pacific OceanGarbage Patch, a team of La Jolla researchers on Thursday showedsamples of what they found floating some 1,000 miles off San Diego'scoast.

Scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanographyused nets to collect marine debris for a study to highlight how thetrash is damaging an ecosystem that few people ever see and few marinebiologists have assessed. The refuse – discarded by beachgoers andships – eventually converges in an area known as the North Pacificgyre, where trade winds can trap it for years.

Scripps and the nonprofit venture Project Kaisei in SanFrancisco each sent a ship to the site. Their roughly $850,000 projectis the most comprehensive effort to date for analyzing the plastictrash.

On Thursday, Scripps director Tony Haymet said there hasbeen enormous public interest in the trip. As a result, the institute –part of the University of California San Diego – will continue toexamine the garbage patch while trying to form an alliance with othergroups for a voyage to the South Pacific gyre.

That expedition could take place late next year or in 2011.

"We are afraid of what we're going to find in the South Pacific, butit's time to go," Haymet said during a news conference at Scripps.

There are five major ocean gyres. The plastic and otherdebris in them harms or kills marine life, thus disrupting the foodchain and overall ecosystem.

Plastic pollution of the ocean is a problem that Scrippsmight be able to help solve rather than study, Haymet said. Someresearchers are trying to see whether it's feasible to recover theplastic and turn it into fuel. They also want to increase publicawareness about the importance of not discarding plastic at beaches orinto waterways.

It will take weeks for the Scripps team and its NorthernCalifornia colleagues to draw scientific conclusions about what theyfound at the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.

"Though we'd been pulling up plastic in our nets fordays, seeing it freely floating about was shocking," said MiriamGoldstein in a blog post from aboard the research vessel New Horizon."The magnitude of the problem suddenly came crashing down on me."

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Mike Lee: (619) 542-4570;

Related Terms: La Jolla, Pacific Ocean, UCSD