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Who: Boyan Slat
Wanted: To rid the oceans of the massive amounts of plastic he saw in the oceans.
But: Researchers who came before him said it would take almost a hundred thousand years to undo the damage done to oceans and marine life by plastics.
So: He looked at obstacles as solutions to try to find a way to clean plastics from oeeans in a reasonable and cost effective way.

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The ocean currently has millions of tons of plastic waste floating it. It is time consuming to remove it and bits of it, that are as small as plankton, are left behind. This plastic, both large and small, are harmful to the creatures that live in the ocean.

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Boyan Slat's TED talk explaining how he saw a problem, looked at the obstacles and current solutions, and created his own.

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How the oceans can clean themselves: Boyan Slat at TEDxDelft

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A book that looks at the garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean and discusses researchers and clean up crews.

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This book outlines the cause and effect outline of littering, which might seem harmless to young children, and how it ends up in the ocean. This book shows the long term and full effects of our decisions.

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A sea turtle swims through the water and spots a white blob floating near the surface. "Yum!" it thinks. "A jellyfish!" Chasing after its dinner, the turtle swallows the item. But the floating blob isn't a jelly-it's a plastic bag that could make the sea turtle sick.

This sea creature isn't alone: Over 700 species of marine animals have been reported to have eaten or been entangled in plastic. Scientists think that the amount of plastic in the ocean might triple by 2050-and that would mean seriously bad news for the ocean and the creatures that live there. But by understanding the issue and taking action, you can help stop that from happening.

What's the problem with plastic?

First, let's get real: Not all plastic is bad. Bike helmets, car airbags, and many medical supplies made with plastic save lives. Plastic water bottles can bring clean drinking water to people who don't have it, and plastic straws can help people with disabilities drink.

The problem is that most of us use and then toss way more plastic than we need: things like grocery bags, drink bottles, straws, food wrappers, and plastic packaging around toys. This kind of plastic that's used only once before being thrown away is called single-use plastic, and it makes up more than 40 percent of all plastic trash.

Where does the plastic go?

That's a lot of trash. Scientists think that 8.8 million tons of plastic winds up in the ocean every year-that's as if you stacked up five plastic grocery bags full of trash on top of each other on every foot of coastline in the world.

How does it get into the sea? Plastic left on the ground as litter often blows into creeks and rivers, eventually ending up in the ocean. And because plastic trash is different from other types of waste-it doesn't decompose back into nature like an apple core or a piece of paper-it stays in the ocean forever. That means discarded fishing nets and six-pack rings can entangle animals; harmful straws and grocery bags can be mistaken as food.

What can we do about it?

You can do so much to help keep Earth clean! You can look at how much single-use plastic your family uses by filling out a plastic journal for a week-then talking about what you can do to use less. Need ideas? Check out these quick tips to reduce your plastic waste. By working together, our choices can help save animals-and the ocean they live in.

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Technology is a wonderful thing until its dark side is appreciated. I have written about plastic in prior blogs. I'll probably have to write about plastic and the ocean for the rest of my life so more people are aware of the terrible toll that plastic has on marine life and the entire marine ecosystem.

Over the SPURS expeditions (Atlantic and Pacific Oceans) from 2012 to today we have seen much visible plastic in the open ocean. This month on Revelle, people have remarked on how little plastic we have seen. Likely that is just luck, because we know its out there.

As a relatively modern material technology, we humans see plastic, for the most part, as a critical and necessary element of our lives. It's hard to imagine life without plastic, nor should we.

We just need to pay more attention to the fate of all our plastic goods. Plastic is ubiquitous and its dark side is that it is a very long-lived substance. For plastic there is no corrosion, dissolving, or biodegrading (thankfully, perhaps, biodegradable plastic is now being invented!). The problem for the ocean is that about 8 million metric tons of plastic are estimated to enter the ocean each year. It is thrown away, washed away, blown away, and generally forgotten as it disappears into the ocean. It is illegal to dump non-biodegradable materials at sea and modern ships follow these international guidelines. The primary source of plastic in the ocean is not dumping at sea but plastic escaping from the land. We have the ways and means to control our plastic destiny if only we could control its disposal at the source!

Recent calculations project that by 2050 there be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Wherever you look, the facts about plastic in the ocean are alarming. The emerging science continues to raise new concerns. Are plastics changing the microbial ecosystem of the ocean? Is there any life form in the ocean that will not be impacted by plastic?

Much of the news one hears about plastic in the ocean relates to "garbage patches" near the center of all the ocean subtropical gyres. This is where surface circulation converges and floating material can accumulate. We can easily imagine what makes up these patches - it is the same material that washes up on islands and coasts worldwide - plastic bags, water bottles, fishing gear, styrofoam, and the detritus of modern life. One imagines the worst - growing islands of plastic debris - for example the well-known "Pacific Garbage Patch" between California and Hawaii. Sadly, there also "waves" of additional debris from tsunamis. Events in the Indian Ocean in 2004 and Japan in 2011 injected enormous amounts of coastal civilization into the ocean.

In reality some visible accumulations of large debris do occur, but they are difficult to find in the vast expanses of the ocean. It may be critical that we focus less on the cosmetic problem of visible garbage and focus more attention on the hidden problem of plastics. By hidden problem I mean this; if one tows a fine mesh net, you will find plastic almost everywhere in the ocean, today! In the ocean plastic is gradually broken into smaller and smaller pieces - eventually becoming what is known as microplastic (less than 5 mm in size). Microplastic becomes fully mixed with the microscopic plants (phytoplankton) and animals (zooplankton) that are the primary food source for ocean life-forms as diverse as sponges, anemones, small fish, and baleen whales. Life and death in the sea is becoming inextricably linked to plastics. Finding microplastics in sea life is the new normal.

The NASA Physical Oceanography Program assists in the study of plastic pollution of the ocean in a number of ways. With present satellite technology it is nearly, if not impossible, to detect from space plastic in the ocean. If dry and if large enough, plastic would have a sufficiently unique spectroscopic signature that remote sensing might be possible. However, most plastic and debris in the ocean is neither large nor dry, precluding direct detection. NASA Earth observation assets are mainly used to track the surface currents and wind responsible for the movement of marine debris. This data, along with sophisticated models of ocean circulation and debris characteristics, do account for the primary features of plastic and marine debris accumulation and distribution. Oceanography, in general, can predict where one might look for open ocean garbage patches (convergences), what accounts for significant differences in types of debris found on different coastlines (windage), and how fast debris disperses from a single source (general circulation dispersion statistics).

What science cannot explain (yet), among many things, is the mechanical and chemical degradation of plastic to microplastics, the fate of plastics and debris in the marine ecosystem, or fully identify the sources for all the plastics found in the ocean. Much research is yet to be done to understand the new ocean habitat known as the plastisphere.

As individuals we must raise awareness of plastic recycling and re-use. Proper disposal of plastics is critical for the health of the ocean.

Tags: ocean salinity, oceanography, SPURS, SPURS2

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Technology is a wonderful thing until its dark side is appreciated. I have written about plastic in prior blogs. I'll probably have to write about plastic and the ocean for the rest of my life so more people are aware of the terrible toll that plastic has on marine life and the entire marine ecosystem.

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Powerful images depicting the amount of plastic in the oceans and its effects.

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Creatives have been paying attention to the plight of the ocean and thanks to their keen observations and social media influence, these photos and videos have shone bright lights on the magnitude of the plastic pollution problem. By having their images go viral, these ocean changemakers have contributed to the global momentum to stop single use plastic and encourage conscious and sustainable consumerism. So take a tour and see what makes these videos and powerful images of plastic pollution so impactful. (photo - Francis Periz)

Sea Turtle vs. Plastic Straw

It is not hard to pick the single video that caught the attention of the largest audience and created the widest stir. One video in particular went ultra-viral receiving nearly forty million views. Christine Figgener, a marine biologist at Texas A&M University and Blue Ocean contributor was conducting research off the Costa Rican coast when she noticed an Olive Ridley sea turtle with what appeared to be a parasitic worm growing from its nose. Upon closer examination the worm turned out to be a plastic straw completely embedded in the turtle's nostril. After 20 tortuous minutes the six inch plastic straw was removed and the turtle was returned to the ocean.

What was it? Maybe the distress of witnessing an animal in such pain or subconsciously knowing that it could have been our straw. We'll never know. The important thing is that the video went viral and gave birth to the "no straw" movement, resulting in plastic straws being removed from drinks in restaurants, bars and resorts around the globe, find our more in: Sea Turtle vs Straw: An Eco Movement goes Viral.

While viewing this video on YouTube you can also find the plastic fork that was removed from the nostril of another Olive Ridley sea turtle. a video that was viewed over six million times. Or watch the video showing strands of a plastic fishing net being removed from the mouth of a Caretta Caretta sea turtle in Greece that was viewed almost 700,000 times. Unfortunately, it seems like there is no lack of videos on marine life impacted by plastic ocean debris.

Ghost Gear Haunts

Ghost gear, lost or discarded by the fishing industry is the cause of many horrendous entanglements with marine life. On our Homepage, we featured a video from the Smithsonian Channel of an enormous whale shark ensnared by a commercial fishing line that was slowly cutting into its body. Taking less than 60 seconds, a diver cut the lines and set the shark free in a dramatic moment near Socorro Island off Baja California, Mexico in a video that received over 4 million views.

Turtle Entangled in Fishing Net

A heartbreaking image of a sea turtle valiantly struggling to free itself from a cocoon of fishing gear won first prize in the 2017 World Press Photo, Nature awards. Shot off the Canary islands, Francis Periz's image of a sea turtle entangled in ghost gear is an iconic symbol, representing marine wildlife's struggle to be freed from the deadly embrace of plastic ocean debris.

Sewage Surfer

When Justin Hoffman was snorkeling in Indonesia last year he spotted a tiny seahorse riding a pink plastic swab. Hoffman captured the image and then entered it into London's Natural History WildLife Photographer of the Year competition.

The image became a finalist and has now gone viral being shared by news outlets around the world. See the entire article: "Sewage Surfer" says a lot about Ocean Health

Penguins Living on a Plastic Island

This was a very recent video that caught our attention because it may be an ominous foretelling of the future, more than we wish to acknowledge. A frozen island composed completely of plastic debris floating in the cold, southern Pacific, is now home to a colony of Gentoo penguins. It's an image that asks, Is this the future? And how far does our wasteful plastic habit travel? Read our entire article: Penguins Living on a Plastic Island, Is This the Future?

Albatross Chick

An iconic image and related video by Chris Jordan shows the inevitable result of sea birds ingesting plastic debris, as food and in many cases feeding it to their chicks. There is a similar scene in Sir David Attenborough's Series Blue Planet II in which he is almost brought to tears over seeing a mother feeding her chick plastic "tidbits" that she thinks are food.

Chris Jordan filmed on Midway island and captured the death throes of many seabirds and their chicks suffocating or starving from ingested plastic.

Bali Low

A recent video has focused worldwide attention on the huge mess that plastic pollution makes in our oceans and on our beaches. David Horner was videotaping while diving off the island of Nusa Penida, about 20k off the popular resort island of Bali in Indonesia, when he was engulfed by a sea of floating plastic debris. Intending to film manta rays Horner found the plastic at times to be almost impenetrable, but his video went viral with thousands of views and captured a new and disturbing perspective on the plastic pollution in our ocean. See our article: Bali Low: Is this our New Definition of Paradise?

Floating Island of Plastic in the Caribbean

Five giant, rotating islands of plastic are known to exist in the North and South Pacific; the Indian Ocean and the North and South Atlantic. Now it seems that there is another and this one is much closer. "Called the Floating Island of Roatan" it collects debris from Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and the Caribbean Islands. This "island" is much smaller than the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but is this a forewarning of a developing, sixth gyre of floating plastic waste?

Kayaking the World's Most Polluted River

The next is not a single video or image, it is a series of video blogs documenting a kayaking trip down the Citarum River in Indonesia. Choked with plastic debris and industrial and human waste, many experts consider the Citarum to be the world's most polluted river. But this did not deter Gary and Sam Bencheghib, two brothers that grew up in Bali and were galvanized by the ocean pollution they saw, to raise the alarm and take action. First they organized beach clean-ups on Bali's famous beaches (something that continues) and then they tackled the most serious pollution problem in the country.

Their videos of kayaking the Citarum went viral causing an international uproar and forced the Indonesian government to promise to take action to curb pollution. Read about their inspiring story in our article: Kayaking the World's Most Polluted River!

The videos and powerful images of plastic pollution that we have shared here, are just a bit of the awesome work done by ocean conscious, environmentally aware creatives. They are leading the way, producing stories that are compelling and cannot be ignored. They deserve a round of applause and our support. Blue Ocean will continue to bring new videos, images and inspiring stories to you and keep you updated on what challenges these creatives will face down next.

By Robert Frerck, Blue Ocean Network

See These Related Blue Ocean Articles:

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Powerful Images of Plastic Pollution Go Viral - Blue Ocean Network

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Creatives have been paying attention to the plight of the ocean and thanks to their keen observations and social media influence, these photos and videos have shone bright lights on the magnitude of the plastic pollution problem. By having their images go viral, these ocean changemakers have contributed to the global momentum to stop single use plastic and encourage conscious and sustainable consumerism.

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Students will work in pairs or small groups to research where plastics in the oceans come from, what is being done about it, and prevention of plastic pollution. In the Boyan Slat video, students will hear that it will take both prevention in combination with cleaning up the oceans to keep plastic pollution at a minimum. Students will reflect on their role in prevention of plastic pollution.

Students will choose either a government official or a business to write to. Students will write a letter explaining what they have learned about plastic pollution and the effects on the ocean. If students choose a government official to write to, they will ask what that person's plans are for cleaning up the ocean and what they can do as citizens to help. If students choose to write to a business, they can either ask the business how they are reducing their plastic output or suggest ways they could reduce their plastic output.

Students will then choose an area in their community that could benefit from a community clean up and organize it. Students will create flyers that they will pass out to parents, teachers, and other students to encourage them to help clean up litter that could potentially end up in our waterways.