Plastic Diet

In August 2007, when famed oceanographer Sylvia Earle addressed The Commonwealth Club about "A Celebration of the Oceans," her speech was less a celebration and more an overview of dire news about the planet's deep waters. "About 90 percent of the big fish that we love to consume are gone," she said. She talked about aquatic "dead zones," areas of the seas in which everything is dying. The earth's wildlife support network, she continued, was diminishing. Mercury poisoning was a growing problem with big, deep-sea fish on our plates.

But Earle, who served as chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the first Bush administration, also argued that there were things people could do to reverse things, by expanding marine sanctuaries, for example.

Today, some people are wondering about another threat to our oceans.

About 20 years ago, predictive reports began filtering in concerning a small-scale ecological disturbance in the making – if one took “small-scale” to mean Texas-sized, and “ecological disturbance” somehow implied raft of poisonous plastic particulates. But seeing as this isn’t the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, perhaps we can dispense with the euphemisms.

The raft was quickly dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it has become a very real problem. Created by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre, which circle slowly inward like an incredibly anticlimactic Charybdis, it has been gathering floating debris for quite some time. Prior to plastic, that debris was mostly plant matter, usually decomposing quickly and then sinking to the depths in the constant, organic snow that sustains ecosystems straight to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

Over the past several decades, however, an influx of non-biodegradable, manmade material has created a floating layer of trash, trapped in the middle of the Pacific.

Runoff is a large source of the trash. Pollution (bottle caps, toys, plastic bags, tape dispensers, you name it) is washed from storm drains and shores into the ocean, where it is caught by the currents and deposited in the Garbage Patch. Cruise ships and freighters are also notorious contributors, dumping waste directly into the sea.

It is wreaking havoc on wildlife. Hundreds of thousands of seabirds, mammals and sea turtles are killed by the garbage every year; the damage to fish populations is far greater. More worrying still, the plastic that constitutes the majority of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch never, ever goes away. Even as it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces, plastic polymers remain intact, resulting eventually in a toxic layer of poisonous contaminants that have already begun accumulating in our own food chain.

Mercury poisoning is no longer the only reason to moderate our intake of large game fish.

What can we do to alleviate the situation? Some people donate to missions such as Project Kaisei, sign a congressional petition, or volunteer for a little time at sea themselves to help the cleanup. There's also a little something called the Plastic Diet, and it’s about what you’d imagine: a drastic reduction in the amount of plastic we use on a daily basis.

Soda bottles, shopping bags, disposable razors, mechanical pencils, almost everything sold in a convenience store. If it can’t be avoided – as with a majority of kids’ toys, computer hardware and medical products – advocates of the plastic diet say it’s often possible to ensure responsible disposal. Though efforts to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch have so far proven costly, difficult and even environmentally unsound, an ounce of prevention may truly be the best approach.

Johan Wolfgang von Goethe years ago said, "It's simply not enough to undestand, but to act." So with knowing comes caring, and with caring there is hope that we will find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that sustain us, that keep us alive. As never again, perhaps, we have a chance to get it right.

--Sylvia Earle, August 1, 2007

-- By Andrew Harrison

Experts: After Spill, Local Bureaucracy is Still Lagging Behind Clean Up

Though the ill-fated cargo ship Cosco Busan trudged through the San Francisco Bay one dense, foggy morning a year ago today, the consequences of the oil spill still reverberate not only ecologically, but at all levels of government.

Despite a bevy of bills signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a far greater amount of awareness about the issue, critics complain that the region is still not sufficiently prepared to deal with another large-scale spill.

California Assemblyman Jared Huffman along with an environmental activist and local emergency manager, speaking today at the Commonwealth Club found that problems still exist in the areas of response.

Huffman, who represents Marin County, which suffered oil damage to the coastline at Bolinas Lagoon, wonders whether private contractors are the best choice for clean up. “Is it a good idea to rely on folks who wold make more money if the spill is allowed to worsen?” said Huffman.

He also questions whether the proximity of such responders, nearly all unfamiliar with the terrain and surf of the Bay Area are best equipped to handle situations.

Some out-of-state responders needed to be rescued from the ocean by volunteer fire fighters, he said.

“They have adopted at the Federal level this system of private contractors." said Huffman. "I think we ought to be questioning the effectiveness and the efficacy of relying on contractors who may be very good at what they do but are not located nearby when you need them."

Also problematic to the panel is the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 that, in effect, gives ship owners the first right to cleaning any spill.

"It is the culture of the oil spill response community to make best use of primary resources -- contractors that specialize in oil spill response. They have elaborate mechanisms and pieces of equipment as well as highly trained personnel that specialize in how to get heavy black stuff off the water into the boat," said Chris Godley, manager of emergency response in Marin. "That said, though, there are other resources that may be useful for such a response that are available from local and even state governments that were initially declined.”

These include the use of aviation, communication systems and local volunteers.

Godley noted the throng of volunteers itching to help clean Bay Area beaches was unprecedented in the United States. Most places where oil spills occur are in areas away from large metropolitan area as opposed to the leak in the greater Bay Area.

“Someone literally poured oil on your doormat, you’re going to want to go out and take care of it,” said Godley.

Sejal Choksi, the director of programs at Baykeeper, a local group striving to preserve the bay waters, believes the key to preventing a large scale disaster is too work quickly after the initial accident.

(For more, read Choksi's article in the opinion section of the San Francisco Chronicle.)

One problem facing the bay's unique geography is that technology does not yet exist to clean up some local coastlines. According to Choksi, the current in Bolinas Lagoon is too swift to operate safely; Angel Island is too rocky; and both Richardson Bay and the mudflats near Emeryville are too shallow to protect.

In the big picture, though, the speakers said that everyday pollution is a more manageable and growing problem than shipping containers floating in and out the bay.

"Oil spills are not the biggest threat to the bay," said Choksi. "They are a tremendous threat to the bay, but our everyday activities do pose more pollution problems for the bay’s health and water quality.”

Though he said that local officials were not ready to respond to the oil spill in the bay a year ago, Godley thinks some of the measures taken since then would have lessened the damage to the ecosystem. “Things may have been different had the provision now in place as a result of the Cosco Busan been in place at the time of the event.”