"Plastic Soup" Found in Atlantic Ocean

(AP)  Researchers are warning of a new blight on the ocean: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over thousands of square miles in a remote expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.

The floating garbage - hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents - was documented by two groups of scientists who trawled the sea between scenic Bermuda and Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores islands.

The studies describe a soup of micro-particles similar to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a phenomenon discovered a decade ago between Hawaii and California that researchers say is likely to exist in other places around the globe.

"We found the great Atlantic garbage patch," said Anna Cummins, who collected plastic samples on a sailing voyage in February.

The debris is harmful for fish, sea mammals - and at the top of the food chain, potentially humans - even though much of the plastic has broken into such tiny pieces they are nearly invisible.

Since there is no realistic way of cleaning the oceans, advocates say the key is to keep more plastic out by raising awareness and, wherever possible, challenging a throwaway culture that uses non-biodegradable materials for disposable products.

"Our job now is to let people know that plastic ocean pollution is a global problem - it unfortunately is not confined to a single patch," Cummins said.

The research teams presented their findings in February at the 2010 Oceans Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon. While scientists have reported finding plastic in parts of the Atlantic since the 1970s, the researchers say they have taken important steps toward mapping the extent of the pollution.

Cummins and her husband, Marcus Eriksen, of Santa Monica, California, sailed across the Atlantic for their research project. They plan similar studies in the South Atlantic in November and the South Pacific next spring.

On the voyage from Bermuda to the Azores, they crossed the Sargasso Sea, an area bounded by ocean currents including the Gulf Stream. They took samples every 100 miles with one interruption caused by a major storm. Each time they pulled up the trawl, it was full of plastic.

A separate study by undergraduates with the Woods Hole, Massachusetts-based Sea Education Association collected more than 6,000 samples on trips between Canada and the Caribbean over two decades. The lead investigator, Kara Lavendar Law, said they found the highest concentrations of plastics between 22 and 38 degrees north latitude, an offshore patch equivalent to the area between roughly Cuba and Washington, D.C.

Long trails of seaweed, mixed with bottles, crates and other flotsam, drift in the still waters of the area, known as the North Atlantic Subtropical Convergence Zone. Cummins' team even netted a Trigger fish trapped alive inside a plastic bucket.

But the most nettlesome trash is nearly invisible: countless specks of plastic, often smaller than pencil erasers, suspended near the surface of the deep blue Atlantic.

"It's shocking to see it firsthand," Cummins said. "Nothing compares to being out there. We've managed to leave our footprint really everywhere."

Still more data are needed to assess the dimensions of the North Atlantic patch.

Charles Moore, an ocean researcher credited with discovering the Pacific garbage patch in 1997, said the Atlantic undoubtedly has comparable amounts of plastic. The east coast of the United States has more people and more rivers to funnel garbage into the sea. But since the Atlantic is stormier, debris there likely is more diffuse, he said.

Whatever the difference between the two regions, plastics are devastating the environment across the world, said Moore, whose Algalita Marine Research Foundation based in Long Beach, California, was among the sponsors for Cummins and Eriksen.

"Humanity's plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint," he said.

Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish: A paper cited by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says as many as 100,000 marine mammals could die trash-related deaths each year.

The plastic bits, which can be impossible for fish to distinguish from plankton, are dangerous in part because they sponge up potentially harmful chemicals that are also circulating in the ocean, said Jacqueline Savitz, a marine scientist at Oceana, an ocean conservation group based in Washington.

As much as 80 percent of marine debris comes from land, according to the United Nations Environmental Program.

The U.S. government is concerned the pollution could hurt its vital interests.

"That plastic has the potential to impact our resources and impact our economy," said Lisa DiPinto, acting director of NOAA's marine debris program. "It's great to raise awareness so the public can see the plastics we use can eventually land in the ocean."

DiPinto said the federal agency is co-sponsoring a new voyage this summer by the Sea Education Association to measure plastic pollution southeast of Bermuda. NOAA is also involved in research on the Pacific patch.

"Unfortunately, the kinds of things we use plastic for are the kinds of things we don't dispose of carefully," Savitz said. "We've got to use less of it, and if we're going to use it, we have to make sure we dispose of it well."

[newmanhomrich]

Durable goods made of recyclable materials such as glass and paper can be a reality in a mass production world if you intend to halt the profits a bit and reach more and more of the poor people everywhere. This will open a big market and stops the garbage flood that will soon affect all of us.
If companies have to close the responsibility loop between production and disposal trough intelligent laws and to save their marketing images
we will surely have a flood of funding to research and even a way to make money out of the plastic soup and to explore it cleaning our tiny planet.

[toolbox]

Not to diminish the threat floating plastic poses to marine organisms, but the Eastern North Atlantic Garbage Patch described here is hardly ?a new blight.? And it?s not the only garbage patch in the North Atlantic. The oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who coined the term ?garbage patch? in the 1990s, has tallied eight of them, four in the Pacific Ocean, three in the Atlantic, and one in the Indian Ocean. The Western North Atlantic patch has been known for centuries as the Sargasso Sea; before plastic flotsam, there was Sargassum seaweed. The eastern patch, surrounding the Azores, has played a notable historical role. The flotsam?sea beans, bamboo, and at least one Eskimo kayak?that washed up on the Azores led Columbus to believe that Asia lay within reach across the sea.
All this is described in Ebbesmeyer?s and Eric Scigliano?s book ?Flotsametrics and the Floating World: How One Man?s Obsession with Runaway Sneakers and Rubber Ducks Revolutionized Ocean Science.?

[goupi514]

I'm all for giving up plastic bags as long as the replacement is equally easy to handle, is disposable and doesn't cost more.

[whatsnext987]

The "earth" is breaking the plastics down and concentrating them in an area. Sounds like a business opportunity. Someone needs to find a way to "harvest" the plastic and use it for something.

[longtree-2009]

hard to care, give a hoot. grandfather tells us he remembers a time when everything purchased came in cardboard, paper containers, glass bottles and rarely was anything in plastic. makes one wonder why not go back to the old style containers, packaging? the usa, at the very least, should stop making plastic containers of any kind and stop importing any plastic products from abroad. but don't hold your breath, it ain't gonna happen.

[rf35]

Sickening.

[erasmus111]

Yes, it sure is.

It's amazing how we humans aren't happy unless we are destroying something. It's pretty pathetic that we can't even dispose of our garbage properly.

One way to cut back on plastic is to go back to using glass. Glass baby bottles, pop bottles, all food containers. Change back to paper bags at grocery stores. Better yet, use the cloth bags.