By: Richard Proctor
CalPIRG will
be hosting an event today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Memorial Union
in hopes of raising awareness about oceanic pollution, specifically
gyres.
A gyre (pronounced ji-er) is a swirling vortex, usually of ocean
or wind currents. CalPIRG will be attempting to raise student awareness
of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, which is heavily polluted and
occupies roughly 10 million square miles of ocean - about twice the
size of Texas.
"We want to educate students about the dangers of plastics," said CalPIRG rganizer Margaret Howe.
"Students are often unaware of the impact plastics have on the environment," she said.
Plastic makes up most of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Due
to ocean currents, this assorted waste, including bottle caps and
shampoo bottles, has been collected in a large concentrated area within
the gyre, according to a research paper by Charles Moore, marine
researcher and founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.
Several ocean currents - namely the North Equatorial Current, the
North Pacific Current, the California Current and the Kuroshio Current
- cause the majority of debris in the Pacific Ocean to end up in this
central area.
"Historically, the debris did not accumulate because it was
eventually broken down by microorganisms into carbon dioxide and
water," Moore said in his research paper, "Out in the Pacific plastic
is getting drastic."
"We're trying to get students to lower their plastic consumption," said CalPIRG Ocean Campaign coordinator Anamarie Urrutia.
"[The awareness event] will try and teach students to use more
biodegradable items and makes sure they throw away their plastic in the
proper receptacles," she said.
Plastic, unlike the flotsam and jetsam that used to amass in the
Pacific, photodegrades instead of biodegrades. This means the plastic
will eventually be reduced to polymers or individual plastic molecules,
but even these small particles are too resilient to be broken down
further or digested.
Although a large part of the 10-million square mile affected area
is made up of assorted plastic garbage, extremely high numbers of
nurdles also contribute to the problem.
"Nurdles are small plastic pellets," Urrutia said.
The pellets, usually under 5 millimeters in diameter, come in many
different colors and are used to produce plastic products by being
melted down into larger objects.
"Fish eat the plastic [pellets] because they're the size of
plankton," Howe said, adding that those fish are often caught by
fishermen and then eaten by humans.
The plankton-to-plastic ratio is one of the major issues resulting
from the gyre. A 1999 study by Moore showed that there was a ratio of
approximately 6:1 of plastic to zooplankton, a ratio that has increased
in the intervening years.
"There's 10 times the amount of plastic in there than plankton," Urrutia said.
The CalPIRG-organized event will take place in the vicinity of the
UC Davis Bookstore and the Memorial Union and will feature a variety of
tables where students can learn about different aspects of gyres and
what they can do to help the situation.
"We'll also have a petition out that people can sign," said Urrutia.
There is no current legislation at either the state or federal level regarding gyres or ocean pollution of this nature.
Urrutia said that those who sign the petition would be saying they
support the formation of legislation aimed at solving the gyre problem.
