plastic tagged posts

The 5 Gyres Institute’s pilot program takes high school students on ocean expeditions to show them how to collect and analyze plastic trash – with the goal of inspiring careers as scientists, policymakers and advocates.

On a bright, clear morning last week, the water was calm and flat at the Newport Beach marina in Southern California. It was the perfect day for seeing marine life in the Pacific Ocean – and for collecting plastic, according to Marcus Eriksen, cofounder and research director of the 5 Gyres Institute, a Los Angeles-based ocean conservation nonprofit.

As Eriksen stood on the top deck of the Newport Legacy, a whale watching boat, 50 students and a few teachers from Animo Venice Charter High School climbed on board the lower deck...

The recent international Ocean’s conference in New York culminated with a strong global commitment to “conserve and sustainably use our oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.”

Oceans generate around half of all oxygen or “every second breathe” we take. How we move forward to protect, conserve and sustainably use this precious resource will affect all 7.5 billion people on earth. All our lives depend on it.

The geography of the Pacific region makes SDG 14 on “Life below Water” essential to all development in the Pacific...

A tiny amount of oxybenzone, a UV-blocking chemical that’s commonly found in sunscreen, can stunt and deform the growth of coral reefs, sometimes killing the coral. In Hawaii, lawmakers are attempting to banthe sunscreens that contain the chemical so snorkelers don’t unwittingly destroy the reefs they visit.

But until that happens–and until people stop washing other oxybenzone-containing products, like some shampoos and dish detergents, down drains that lead to the ocean–researchers suggest that something else could help: tiny beads designed to suck the offending chemical out of the water.

The beads are made primarily from a biodegradable mix of an algae product and chitosan, a material produced from shrimp and lobster shells after fishing...

The hard coral off the shores of southern New England isn’t nearly as glamorous as its tropical counterparts — in fact, it’s barely noticed even by experienced divers — but it could play a vital role in determining the size and depth of the world’s plastic footprint.

“Coral can’t run, so it makes for a good model to see how much plastic is in a particular habitat,” said Randi Rotjan, a research assistant and professor of biology at Boston University. “My guess is that coral takes in a lot of plastic because it can’t run away from it.”

ecoRI News recently met up with Rotjan, Boston University research technician Cara Johnson and Michael Lombardi of Middletown-based Ocean Opportunity Inc...

Plastic waste entering the seas from both sides of the North Atlantic is accumulating in the Arctic Ocean, where it can damage local wildlife.

The low population of the Arctic Circle means little plastic waste is generated there. However, a new study has shown that the Greenland and Barents Seas (east of Greenland and north of Scandinavia) are accumulating large amounts of plastic debris that is carried and trapped there by ocean currents.

The new study, published today in Science Advances, found that the Greenland and Barents seas have accumulated hundreds of tons of plastic debris composed of around 300 billion pieces, mainly fragments around the size of a grain of rice. The vast majority of these fragments originate form the North Atlantic.

The team behind the study is composed of resea...

Researchers in Norway were in for a shock when they discovered more than 30 plastic bags and other plastic waste inside the stomach of a whale. The whale, which had been put down by wardens off the coast of western Norway, had clearly consumed a huge amount of non-biodegradable waste.

Despite the grisly findings, researchers say that the plastics found in the whale are ‘not surprising’, as the amount of waste in the seas continues to grow. The whale was in poor condition, and had become stranded in shallow waters off the island of Sotra, leading to wardens putting the animal down.

Researchers from the University of Bergen analysed the whale’s stomach, and found huge amounts of plastic waste.

Dr Terje Lislevand, a zoologist who studied the whale, said: ‘The whale’s stomach was full of pla...

An estimated 1,900 microfibers can get rinsed out of a single piece of synthetic clothing each time it’s washed, and these microplastic fibers might be the biggest contributors to ocean pollution.

The issue of plastics polluting our oceans isn’t a new one, as the presence of vast quantities of plastic waste in the water and shorelines has been researched and documented. The origin of much of the larger bits of plastic debris in the ocean is fairly obvious, at least for those items that are identifiable with the naked eye, but one of the more pervasive ocean pollutants is so small as to be virtually invisible to us...