From Oregon State University:
Oceanic “garbage patch” not nearly as big as portrayed in media
CORVALLIS, Ore. – There is a lot of plastic trash floating in the Pacific Ocean, but claims that the “Great Garbage Patch” between California and Japan is twice the size of Texas are grossly exaggerated, according to an analysis by an Oregon State University scientist.
Further claims that the oceans are filled with more plastic than plankton, and that the patch has been growing tenfold each decade since the 1950s are equally misleading, pointed out Angelicque “Angel” White, an assistant professor of oceanography at Oregon State.
“There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists,” White said. “We have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates; we don’t need the hyperbole. Given the observed concentration of plastic in the North Pacific, it is simply inaccurate to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have observed an exponential increase in plastic.”
White has pored over published literature and participated in one of the few expeditions solely aimed at understanding the abundance of plastic debris and the associated impact of plastic on microbial communities. That expedition was part of research funded by the National Science Foundation through C-MORE, the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education.
The studies have shown is that if you look at the actual area of the plastic itself, rather than the entire North Pacific subtropical gyre, the hypothetically “cohesive” plastic patch is actually less than 1 percent of the geographic size of Texas.
“The amount of plastic out there isn’t trivial,” White said. “But using the highest concentrations ever reported by scientists produces a patch that is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size.”
Another way to look at it, White said, is to compare the amount of plastic found to the amount of water in which it was found. “If we were to filter the surface area of the ocean equivalent to a football field in waters having the highest concentration (of plastic) ever recorded,” she said, “the amount of plastic recovered would not even extend to the 1-inch line.”
Recent research by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that the amount of plastic, at least in the Atlantic Ocean, hasn’t increased since the mid-1980s – despite greater production and consumption of materials made from plastic, she pointed out.
“Are we doing a better job of preventing plastics from getting into the ocean?” White said. “Is more plastic sinking out of the surface waters? Or is it being more efficiently broken down? We just don’t know. But the data on hand simply do not suggest that ‘plastic patches’ have increased in size. This is certainly an unexpected conclusion, but it may in part reflect the high spatial and temporal variability of plastic concentrations in the ocean and the limited number of samples that have been collected.”
The hyperbole about plastic patches saturating the media rankles White, who says such exaggeration can drive a wedge between the public and the scientific community. One recent claim that the garbage patch is as deep as the Golden Gate Bridge is tall is completely unfounded, she said.
“Most plastics either sink or float,” White pointed out. “Plastic isn’t likely to be evenly distributed through the top 100 feet of the water column.”
White says there is growing interest in removing plastic from the ocean, but such efforts will be costly, inefficient, and may have unforeseen consequences. It would be difficult, for example, to “corral” and remove plastic particles from ocean waters without inadvertently removing phytoplankton, zooplankton, and small surface-dwelling aquatic creatures.
“These small organisms are the heartbeat of the ocean,” she said. “They are the foundation of healthy ocean food chains and immensely more abundant than plastic debris.”
The relationship between microbes and plastic is what drew White and her C-MORE colleagues to their analysis in the first place. During a recent expedition, they discovered that photosynthetic microbes were thriving on many plastic particles, in essence confirming that plastic is prime real estate for certain microbes.
White also noted that while plastic may be beneficial to some organisms, it can also be toxic. Specifically, it is well-known that plastic debris can adsorb toxins such as PCB.
“On one hand, these plastics may help remove toxins from the water,” she said. “On the other hand, these same toxin-laden particles may be ingested by fish and seabirds. Plastic clearly does not belong in the ocean.”
Among other findings, which White believes should be part of the public dialogue on ocean trash:
- Calculations show that the amount of energy it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the mass of the plastic itself;
- Plastic also covers the ocean floor, particularly offshore of large population centers. A recent survey from the state of California found that 3 percent of the southern California Bight’s ocean floor was covered with plastic – roughly half the amount of ocean floor covered by lost fishing gear in the same location. But little, overall, is known about how much plastic has accumulated at the bottom of the ocean, and how far offshore this debris field extends;
- It is a common misperception that you can see or quantify plastic from space. There are no tropical plastic islands out there and, in fact, most of the plastic isn’t even visible from the deck of a boat;
- There are areas of the ocean largely unpolluted by plastic. A recent trawl White conducted in a remote section of water between Easter Island and Chile pulled in no plastic at all.
There are other issues with plastic, White said, including the possibility that floating debris may act as a vector for introducing invasive species into sensitive habitats.
“If there is a takeaway message, it’s that we should consider it good news that the ‘garbage patch’ doesn’t seem to be as bad as advertised,” White said, “but since it would be prohibitively costly to remove the plastic, we need to focus our efforts on preventing more trash from fouling our oceans in the first place.”
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When this hype was starting, I went and watched all 10-12 youtube videos of a group of students who hopped on a boat from Long Beach, CA and sailed out to this northern gyre. It was painful to watch as about 85% of it was about college kids going stir crazy on a long ocean voyage on a small boat, and about romance between one of the college guys and the only college-age girl to go.
The 10 minutes or so of footage of them actually collecting garbage was a series of chopped-up scenes of them dredging the ocean for what appeared to be hours (as the sun position kept changing between cuts) just to pick up a mason jar full of small plastic bits. Now, that is pollution and we should try to eliminate that impact on the ocean if at all possible. But the media portrays this thing as if you can just go out into the pacific and walk on all the plastic, when the reality is you have to work hard to collect a small amount of garbage. The video also provided no proof that what was dredged up was indeed plastic, some of it could have been fairly normal ocean matter.
Also, the few scenes they showed under the water while out in this gyre demonstrated that the water was indeed clear and it was impossible to see any evidence of garbage, you weren’t swimming in some fog of trash.
Over-hyped is right. It is a shame these people must continue to resort to this tactic, they undermine their entire cause.
Here in New Zealand, at a location on the south-western tip of teh North Island, tides heading from the Pacific rush through the Cook Strait, and meet up with tides swinging around the Island. These are many hours apart, and seem to sweep up all the flotsam and bring it all ashore in a mass stranding at Te Ikaamaru Bay – so much so that locals know it as “Plastic Bay”
This really a local aberhation, and no other beaches seem plagued by the same problems. We run rubbish pick-ups and less than a week later you wouldn’t know we had been there.
Yet other local beaches remain pristine
Strange stuff this Plastic – and yes – during the pickup it is evident that much of the plastic is heavily decomposed.
Andy
I say we build a huge white island of plastic, albedo is nice.
Willis quick, how big of a white plastic island would it take to lower the earths temp
by say 1 degree C.
Or maybe the arctic could use some prostethic “ice”
“Further claims that the oceans are filled with more plastic than plankton, and that the patch has been growing tenfold each decade since the 1950s are equally misleading…”
I wholeheartedly agree that any trash in our oceans is too much trash, but more plastic than plankton? Real people believe this nonsense?
Now Angel’s response is my kind of science. Thoughtful, measured, and not afraid of standing up against the media hype.
Exaggerations do not equal environmentalism?
Son of, there goes the easy funding…
Almost everyone would agree that we need to keep plastics out of the oceans to the maximum extent possible. I’m afraid that this is yet another example of how the pursuit of public funding has corrupted science. These exaggerated claims are designed to get politicians to make more grant money available. It is a form a fraud.
These researchers deserve commendation. The recent trends in environmental research have been…”It’s worse than we thought, give us more money so we can study it further.” I thought objective science had gone the way of the dodo, but this is great.
I also feel that these researchers make an important point. Just because they are saying that the problem has been exaggerated, doesn’t mean that the problem isn’t real. But is does mean that we should be thoughtful about the solutions. In this case, just doing our best not to pollute is a better alternative then fishing for plastic.
Warmists could learn from this type of science. They have tolerated exaggeration (20 m sea level rise in a century) in the name of bringing attention to the perceived problem. Then they propose solutions (like Cap and Tax) in which the cost far outweighs any benefit.
I read this and it reminds of the George Carlin routine that maybe the Earth developed humanity to provide it with plastic! The Earth has succeeded! We are now dispensible! LoL
Can’t believe all that Garbage came out from Models!
The environmentalists have a good track record of inventing and exaggerating a crisis intended to get laws passed favoring their favorite desires. The problem with that is when law makers and judges act on that kind of information.
I find it odd that if you do a search on this topic they show some Central American youth in a canoe paddling through trash in some pond and they say it is in the middle of the ocean. Even John Stewart used the image in his book on the Earth. I don’t get it.
Calculations show that the amount of energy it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the mass of the plastic itself;
I know that E = mc^2 and all that, but what the hell does that sentence mean?
Omigod, a natural process that collects hydrocarbons for our use? Is there no limit to Gaia’s Cornucopia?
==========
The world’s enviromental organizations (Greenpeace, WWF etc) have shown themselves to greatly multiply and exaggerate any threats as a matter of policy. This often seen “ends justify the means” of late has polluted environmentalism and done (hopefully not irreparable) harm to science itself. Worse, science has shown itself willing to participate in hyperbole and outright dishonesty in the name of just cause, too, and it seems to have the perhaps unexpected result that it corrupts the practioner and even the broader practice of science. Cold fusion and a few other famous “findings” are to be found in the past to be sure. However, today, for more than just the few, it is almost okay to lie, cook findings, sell your soul to the devil to get grants and so on. Climate science, wildlife biology, and the virtually moribund social sciences as scientific inquiry are the most fruitful in this exercise these days. But we have had an increase in scientific dishonesty elsewhere these days. Today (no link) it is reported that the link between the usual children’s innoculations and autism found by a UK researcher are a total hoax and has put millions of children at risk – probably because of activist anti-vaccincation leanings. We had the Korean DNA researcher who cooked his results, the Japanese statistic of having the largest pop of centigenarians shown to be hugely inflated …. and I guess the list will keep going on until the goodwill possessed by scientists has been all used up in a good cause.
If plastics are a problem then we would see health problems in sea bird colonies, heir young and egg shells and in the bird waste they produce in huge quantities. Plastics do break down, microbes do eat and break down plastics and yet this information is largely hidden.
Again and again we see wild exaggerations and inflated claims made only to see those claims fail down the line and when they do fail the publicity is a tiny fraction of the original claims. WWF/FoE/Greenpeace and others made great play on the islands of rubbish, wild claims were made and scaremongering led to bans on plastic bags and restrictions and taxes and campaigns for reusable bags and less packaging. These ‘remedies’ to a non existent/greatly exaggerated problem led to direct consequences.
Who can forget the claims of a plastic disaster touted by green groups forcing reactions that led to knee jerk attacks on the plastics industry? So massive changes are enacted by law to address problems that turn out to have little basis in fact, wholesale changes and expensive changes made have no effect and who can forget that the reusable bags forced on people harbour more germs than your average toilet bowl?
There is not a problem with plastics in the seas because plastics are largely biodegradable, its a yet another non existent non problem that led to a rush to fix it and that fix caused more problems itself.
Doubting the extent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is denialism, and on par with denying the law of gravity AND evolution! You Garbage Patch Denialists! /sarc
“Calculations show that the amount of energy it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the mass of the plastic itself”
What in the HECK is this statement suppossed to mean????? Sorry for being a life-long scientist, but these are the kind of rubbery MSM statements that drive me batty.
AndiC says:
January 6, 2011 at 11:13 am
Andy,
You touched on one of my pet peeves. Like most of us, pollution is a problem and needs to be addressed. However it seems that the hysterical ones want to tie it to a problem that does not exist – AGW. Cleaning up our environment is one cause we can get behind – but not at the cost of impoverishing the entire world. Indeed, the countries that seem to be making the greatest strides in cleaning up the environment, are the ones using the advances of technology to do it – advances that the AGW crowd would roll back in order to fix a problem that is not in evidence.
Perhaps shift the subsidies to biofuel to produce corn plastic?
What???
The news media environmental claim proven to be hyped!
I’m sure that NEVER happened before…. 😉
“Calculations show that the amount of energy it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the mass of the plastic itself;”
What units of energy and of mass did they use to produce this numerical comparison?
or did they somehow use E=mc^2 ?
“Recent research by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that the amount of plastic, at least in the Atlantic Ocean, hasn’t increased since the mid-1980s – despite greater production and consumption of materials made from plastic, she pointed out.”
It is global warming.
She missed her chance to get more funding by tying her research into the AGW scare. It is obvious the amount of plastic hasn’t increased because the increased CO2 is making the ocean acidic which melts the plastic. Someone needs to get a grant application started on this right away before the AGW money dries up, or freezes.
The worst I see when sailing is plastic bottles. They contain air and float. I never could see why people grew up and went back on the bottle.
Sorry to be off topic but I just read this and it kinda fits in but on a much larger scale.
It goes to show you that scientist/doctors are willing to perpetrate a fraud on a mass of people all for the purpose of monetary gain. SHAME SHAME SHAME !!!!!!! How many climate scientist has or is acting in the manner as Dr. Wakefield has to gain grant $$$$$$$
Nailed: Dr Andrew Wakefield
and the MMR – autism fraud
Almost incredibly, the trigger for what would become a worldwide controversy was a single scientific research paper published in a medical journal – the Lancet – in February 1998. Written by a then-41-year-old laboratory researcher, Dr Andrew Wakefield, and co-authored by a dozen other doctors, it reported on the cases of 12 anonymous children with developmental disorders, who were admitted to a paediatric bowel unit at the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead, north London, between July 1996 and February 1997.
Brian Deer the sole investigator who has exposed what I think is the biggest fraud since the Piltdown Man.
http://briandeer.com/mmr/lancet-summary.htm