This blog shares the research experiences and findings conducted at University of North Carolina Wilmington (UNCW faculty and students) in conjunction with Plastic Ocean Project. Earlier posts share open-ocean sampling and adventures in the North and South Atlantic, the South Pacific and the North Pacific Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Outreach and education is the primary purposes to bring global awareness to an issue that has reached a crisis level in the marine environment.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Ocean Spits out plastic on Kamilo Bay
Oh the places you'll go especially if you have native Hawaiians take you to remote places on Hawaii - The Big Island. Noni Sanford(sorry you were sick Ron)took me on a tour I'll be talking about the rest of my life. Over looking a steaming Volcano, walking through a volcano tube, and then of course making the 45 minute trek down very rough safari-type terrain dodging ancient volcano rocks and cliff hanger turns to get to Kamilo Bay. When we arrived there were researchers there collecting, then counting certain items of plastics. One such item was fishing spacers. It brought to mind the daunting task of cleaning up a natural disaster, but this is an unnatural disaster that could be avoided.
So thanks Jennifer for agreeing to keep my blog alive while I sail on Charlie Moore's 50' Research Vessel out into the North Pacific Gyre over the next three weeks. Since I had one more opportunity to put something up, I thought I would share with you the footage I shot with my iPhone today at one of the most trashed beaches ever. We dug through 10 inches of plastic particulates, meaning bits, that replaced sand. Your boys could not make a nice, neat sand castle out of this stuff. I'll send footage of that later. But for now, check out the amount of plastic trash the ocean kicked out on to the shore of Kamilo Bay. Mind blowing. Thanks J! We'll be in touch.
Bon
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how strange to look at the beautiful blue ocean and the gorgeous black rock and to see a bright green plastic trash right in the middle of the rock next to a yellow plastic blow up toy.
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