For 20 days this past August, a group of oceanography students from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), accompanied by public service organization Project Kaisei, traveled through the North Pacific Ocean Gyre to sample plastic debris and garbage in the ocean. The Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) voyaged from southern California to the coastal waters of Hawaii and back to Newport Beach, Ore. It took a first magnifying-glass look at the extent of plastic damage in the North Gyre. SIO director Tony Haymet described the trip as “a forage into the great plastic garbage patch in the north” during a press conference held on Aug. 27, about one week after the expedition returned. The voyage on the research vessel New Horizon was led by SIO graduate student and scientist Miriam Goldstein, who initiated the trip with a funding grant she wrote to gain use of one of the revered SIO research ships. In summary of the research data collected on the ship, Goldstein stated, “We did find debris… coming up in our nets in over 100 consecutive net tows over a distance of 1,700 miles… It is pretty shocking.” She pointed out how unusual it is to pull up the same thing over and over again in different parts of the ocean and surmised that it must mean “there is a lot of plastic out there.” Summarizing their findings, she said, “[There is] not a big island, not a garbage dump [that we] can really see easily.” She described it more as a place where large debris floats by a ship only occasionally, but a lot of tiny pieces of plastic exist below the surface of the water. “Ocean pretty much looks like ocean,” she said. The plastic fragments are mostly less than a quarter inch long and are below the surface. The New Horizon vessel was equipped to take physical measurements in the ocean, such as temperature and salinity levels, that will help the scientists examine ocean currents. They hope to correlate that data with what they learn about plastic in those areas. This type of subsurface sampling associated with plastic debris had previously never been done. “[We] have a lot of work to do before we are able to say anything about definite impact on marine life,” said Goldstein, adding that analysis of the data collected on the voyage will be a lot of work in the months ahead. However, with the variety of expertise and backgrounds of scientists on the ship, the data will be examined from many different scientific angles. Specific areas of analysis will include the following: toxicity, influence on ocean animal feeding, invasive species, changes in nutrient cycles and alteration in food webs. Focus will rest on the density, size and type of debris with regard to these and other specific scientific research areas. One example of analysis includes that of the fish team, which will look at the guts of the fish for plastic ingestion and analyze accordingly. The toxicologists will specifically examine the transfer of toxic chemicals. “[We are] very fortunate to have a group of diverse interests working together on this project,” Goldstein said. Overall, they are concerned with how biogeochemical processes that are generally not well understood are affected by the presence of plastics in the ocean. Goldstein called the magnitude of the analysis “scary and complicated.” Doug Woodring, co-founder and project director for Project Kaisei, said that one of their follow-up activities for the expedition is to “help disseminate the findings to a broad audience, including policymakers, business/industry leaders, educators and the general public.” Project Kaisei aims to garner support for future activities related to possible climate and land-based prevention programs. Woodring called the partnership with SIO “an important step towards finding realistic solutions whereby Scripps can provide scientific results and Project Kaisei can provide outreach, inspire solutions and create new fund-raising opportunities.” The group hopes to take an expedition to the South Gyre and collect more data. This expedition would require a larger boat, as the waters in the southern hemisphere are rougher. With partners, SIO plans to raise funds during 2010-11 and gather enough scientists and equipment to execute a successful expedition south. Researchers speculate the plastic accumulation in the South Gyre is twice as much as that in the North. For information, visit www.sio.ucsd.edu.