As the saying goes, the more you know, the more you know you don’t know…. We’re making the most of the winds where we can, trawling and hand netting, retrieving debris as we find it and contemplating the latest information. Over the last few days we have continued making our way North toward Cabo San Lucas. These border currents, however, do not seem to move debris in consistent bands, but in smaller patches defined by eddies, windrows and small scale current systems. We know that the high-pressure systems that sit consistently in the eastern reaches of both the North and South Pacific determine the wind circulation and the currents that border the accumulation areas. Gathering data to frame both the “garbage patches”, Algalita and Captain Moore are one step closer to understanding these ever-changing systems. As we drifted along, capturing highly weathered and fouled fragments (instead of the macrodebris that have been our typical catch so far for Leg 9), it seemed we were tracking through not just a highway feeding into the North Pacific “Garbage Patch” but at 6° degrees North we had discovered a possible South Eastern border of the accumulation zone. I was struggling to make sense of it, however, Captain Moore had an idea. I was sure I had left sights of those sickening concentrations well behind. I couldn’t believe what we were seeing! Here at the southernmost reaches of the North Pacific, having only just crossed the equator and far from land or any known accumulation zone, we are finding similar concentrations to that of the outer limits of the South Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Our search left us without the green fragment, though not empty handed, as at the slower speed we were alerted to a heavy concentration of meso and micro fragments around us! Thinking we’d found a windrow (an area of converging waters), Charlie and I were excited to put the Manta Trawl in and take a sample. Captain Moore, never one to lose hope, encouraged the pursuit of it and so we began to back up looking for it. Only a foot long, it was gone out of sight by the time we had slowed the boat down and I headed to the stern to find it. Off our starboard side, I spotted a piece of green Poly pipe floating past the boat, slightly below the surface. I was sitting up on the deck keeping watch and Gonzalo was at the helm. It was nearing the end of a not-so-eventful day and we had lowered the sails after the wind dropped off. Framing the Garbage Patches - N 14 13.102, W 106 01.134 – Raquelle de Vine. Gwen Lattin, Chief Scientist and Research Biologist, teaches students in the Cientificos de la Basura Program how to analyze Trawl samples.Īpril 10. Algalita continues its work in Coquimbo, Chile. ![]() 2010), found that 35% of these fish in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre had consumed plastic, some in large quantities. The health of the entire ocean is dependent on their survival and any disruptions can have a domino effect that may lead to ecological collapse. Lanternfish (myctophids) account for as much as 55% of global fish biomass and they play a critical role in the food chain. In addition to quantitative analysis, Algalita investigated how plastic in the South Pacific threatens fish survival in this region. 2015).ĭuring this expedition, Algalita collected plastic pollution samples across the Equatorial Currents, the South Pacific Subtropical Gyre and at various stations along the Chilean coast in order to strengthen the existing data set. However, more data is needed to eliminate the possibility of introducing potentially large errors in global estimates of the amount of floating plastic (van Sebille et al. In the Southern hemisphere’s gyres we have sufficient data to confirm the presence of floating plastic debris (Eriksen et al.
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