ANNE RITZ
News Editor
As we go about our daily lives, a bottle dropped on the ground seems insignificant. But over the past few decades, the accumulation of plastic has made its way to the ocean, putting the seas in danger.
On Wednesday, April 28, Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins from the 5 Gyres Institute spoke at the Earth Week keynote address on their research in the gyres. The presentation was entitled “The Perils of Plastic: Notes from the Ocean and Great Lakes.”
Anna Cummins began the presentation by explaining a history of plastics. Though they have become a part of our everyday lives, the have only been used in households since the 1960s.
She explained that the pollution in the five gyres begins as simply as leaving a bottle cap in the street. Because of litter from disposable plastic products, 80 percent of the issue starts on land.
Her presentation explained that, as a society, we have changed our eco-scapes, and that this has become an international issue. The major impacts of plastic pollution are entanglement of animals and ingestion, which is how it ultimately impacts both land and sea animals.
Both Eriksen and Cummins traveled on expeditions to the gyres to do research on the plastic pollution. Cummins explained that, on a 2008 expedition to the North Pacific Gyre, they sampled the sea’s surface and found mostly broken down particles of plastic. These small particles, on a time scale that we understand as humans, last forever.
The plastic pollution is ultimately making its way into the food chain. Cummins explained that plastic film looks the same as natural food sources to plankton and fish which ingest the plastic because they cannot make the distinction.
Plastics at sea absorb chemicals. During the presentation, Cummins explained that a piece of plastic the size of a lentil could hold millions of pollutants. Ultimately, plastics can be a vehicle for pollutants in our bloodstream.
Cummins told that these chemicals are endocrine disruptors (chemicals which disrupt hormones) and there is enough information to warrant concern.
As the founders of the 5 Gyres Institute, Cummins and Eriksen work to raise awareness about the gyres as well as hold expeditions to do research. Their mission is to stop the flow of plastic into the oceans and advocate better-designed materials, consumer education and fair legislation.
Cummins and Eriksen co-founded the 5 Gyres Institute in 200, in collaboration with Algalita and Pangaea Explorations to research plastic pollutions.
Eriksen received his Ph D. in science education to accompany the skills of communication to his science background. He became interested in doing research in the gyres after the 1991 Gulf War.
“I was in the first Gulf War, 24-years-old, fighting outside Kuwait City, sitting in a foxhole sitting next to another Marine, and I said to him, ‘If we survive this war, I want to build a raft like Tom Sawyer.’ And I did thirteen years later, I built a raft out of plastic bottles and I sailed the entire Mississippi River from Northern Lake Itasca, Minnesota, all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico, and I saw this never ending trail of plastic trash,” he said.
Eriksen explained that the Mississippi River drains 32 percent of the country and, in traveling to the Pacific, he saw the same trash. In the islands in the Pacific, he saw plastic in the stomachs of hundreds of birds.
“It just hit me as being really wrong that we did that. I also saw a huge need for people to understand this problem. Because it’s very difficult to tell a problem about what’s happening in the middle of the ocean where no one goes, no one goes in the middle where the trash collects,” he said.
Eriksen and Cummings built the institute with the intention of exploring all give gyres and spreading awareness by doing public awareness stunts, such as building rafts out of plastic bottles.
“I want to bring attention to what we thought as an immoral assault against the environment. I argue, and it’s difficult to counter, that this is our self-preservation that we’re fighting for,” said Eriksen. “Not just ocean conversation. If the oceans are trashed and we’re polluting the sealife, the fish that we harvest from the ocean that feed the world, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. That’s the idea.
This is about self-preservation.”
Cummins and Eriksen also did research with Dr. Mason, chemistry professor to find levels of plastic pollution in the Great Lakes. They found that one of the biggest issues was due to consumer products such as micro-beads, which are used as exfoliates. They are working to publish a research paper on the topic.
“It’s growing very fast [awareness],” said Eriksen, “Dr. Mason, she called me a year and half ago interested in this issue and I called her back and said, ‘Let’s do a study. Let’s go to the Great Lakes and do this.’ She organized the expedition, and here we are. We’re working on a research paper describing the issue and it will be published very quickly.”
Eriksen hopes that after people become more aware about the issue, they will understand that the irresponsibility of plastic consumption must end.
“We are very quickly trashing our planet with waste. And it’s going need a lot of attention with how we manage waste. Better waste management; we need better-designed products. We need legislation to stop the continued manufacturing these badly designed products, such as the micro- beads,” he said.
Though the oceans are in danger, Eriksen has found that people are gaining awareness on the issue.
“I have a lot of hope. When I meet young people, I see that there’s tons of innovation there. People are creatures of habit, when they have the right habits, then we can live long, healthy, happy lives. If don’t think ahead fifty years ahead of ourselves, the quality of life, we’re doomed to fail,” Eriksen said. “But when I meet young people, I have a lot of hope.”