July 16, 2014 Midday position: 33.37.849 138.07.326 There is no away...” One of my favorite quotes from Captain Charles Moore is “there is no away,” which brings to light the fact that most people are so disassociated with what happens to our trash, we act like there’s a magical place things go to when we no longer have use for them. We can put trash in landfills, yet the chemicals creep back to us through polluted groundwater. We toss things or they are carried by waterways downhill into the ocean, and - especially out here - we are reminded there’s no such place as “away. Case in point: friends know I’m normally a pretty good cook, but I made my first loaf of bread in the machine the other day, and it was a monumental flop. Looked more like a pale brick with a sunken pit in the middle. Some bold crew mate sliced off a corner (maybe as experiment as we are all scientists), but the rest of the loaf sat untouched and unloved for a day or two before disappearing. Food is so precious out here we try not to be picky, but there are of course limits to what is tolerable. So everyone was relieved when it no longer appeared on the counter, and I didn’t question it’s whereabouts. Until well into the next day, as we were looking for trash and debating getting in the water for a swim, someone exclaimed “what’s THAT??” To our shock and my personal horror it was my nasty loaf of bread - soggy and disgusting, but completely intact, save the missing corner. It had not sank or been eaten by anything out here, it came back to haunt me. No escaping my own bad cooking, I guess. Or the situation we humans are putting ourselves in as we fill this pristine ocean environment with plastic debris. I do find it telling that as is evidenced from the nibble marks often found on plastic fragments, fish frequently eat and ingest plastic, but snubbed my bread-like creation and left it unscathed. We have now been on the move for 2 days to find calmer weather as it got too rough to even work our research area and do trawls. We will move to the south end of our transect line, then will move north again once things calm down. Today we were under sail all day, plotting along at 150 degrees, now just 900 miles from San Diego. I wonder if when we return and finish our trawls, if we’ll be able to relocate that amazing trash island again near Station 2, and I can dive it one more time. See the Angry Angelfish Posse again, characters I will never forget that dwell in that bizarre ecosystem of human rubbish. Hopefully my bread will sink or be lost at sea, and not join that growing island. Cynthia Matzke Master of Advanced Studies Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Posted on: Fri, 18 Jul 2014 01:27:44 +0000
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