Return Flight

Here are a few pictures. This is a wrack line at John Smith's Bay in Bermuda.

These are the plastics we were able to fish out of the water in about an hour.

This is a photo of the end of the manta trawl. You can see the plastic bits.

I have a serious case of “dock rock;” I still feel like I’m on a boat and I’m probably walking like a drunken sailor.

Flying over hundreds of miles of the Atlantic Ocean today got me to thinking about the enormity of the world’s oceans. We really don’t know how much plastic is out there or how it’s affecting us. It was very clear from our conversations with Bermudians that they really care about marine debris. They’re 600 miles from the nearest land mass so the health of the ocean means a lot to them.

People in a busy US airport, however, are a somewhat different story. I’ve forgotten that airports are great places to observe human behavior and to appreciate the bonds people share. I saw great images such as a tall young man carrying 2 suitcases for an older woman and a father watching over a toddler playing with a stanchion near security. There’s a lot of beauty in human relationships. We’re on this planet together and we all play a role in the problems and the solutions of our world.

I went outside the airport because I had a three hour layover and I always prefer to be outside instead of inside. I like to feel the temperature, humidity and wind of different locations. Right outside the door, I saw two wrappers and a plastic lid to a coffee cup on the sidewalk. I just saw the impacts of careless litter 700 miles of the US coast; it was hard to see litter that would have gone out to sea if it hadn’t been picked up. It takes awhile to readjust to constantly seeing litter.

We have a long way to go to understand the impact of plastics in the ocean, to come to grips with our personal contributions, and ultimately, to find a way to balance our modern lives with the stewardship of our planet.

I don’t know what the answer is, but I know that I’ve just seen a life changing view of the problem.

We’ll compile data and distribute pictures and video from the trip. But it’s up to you and to each of us to accept the consequences of our past actions and to seek out solutions for the future.

Seeing the beauty of human interactions in the airport assures me that we can make progress if we work together to keep this planet worthy of the little girls dancing to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in the middle of the Charlotte airport. They symbolize the people we individually care about, and the ones who’s future we are bound to protect.

Keep the faith.

Posted by Jennifer O'Keefe

The last voyage day was a big one

Freed a Fish caught in Plastic

Today surpassed all the others on our plastic ocean voyage. It dwarfed the Water Spot (funnel cloud) off in the short distance on Thursday. Even the soaring dolphins, the angel white Long Tail Terns and Flying Fish, as beautiful as entertaining as they were, do not compare to what we witnessed today. Not even the five vials of plastic that we plucked from the North Atlantic Gyre today wowed us to the extent to what I videoed tonight. Michael Gonsior, a post doc from University of California Irvine, assisted us in removing marine debris with a net as the ship idled while collecting deep ocean water. Gonsior plucked a black motor oil bottle from the ocean and by doing so saved the life of a fish that got trapped in the bottle when it was small and grew too large to ever escape. He had to rip the bottle open in order to free the beautiful blue spotted fish from its cramped quarters. The video reveals the story as it happened - evidence that plastics have a negative impact on our marine life.

Go-Flo Bottles sampling for Trace Metals

One thing I have learned while being out on this research vessel is what little I know about a lot of things. BIOS Dr. Maureen Conte, the lead scientist on the Atlantic Explorer Research Vessel heads up several research projects while out at sea. One that Jennifer helped participate in while I filmed was the rigging and deployment of the Go-Flo bottles. These bottles sample for trace metals as deep as 3000 meters! Using Kevelar wire so as to not contaminate the samples, they remain closed until the release valves are triggered so that the only water that is captured is the water at the specific locations down deep in the ocean layers. Rachel Franzblau, Conte's undergraduate assistant, explains in the video.

found plastics in our first trawl

Wednesday night was our first open ocean manta Trawl of our expedition. Jennifer and I stood watch as the manta trawl took to the mild seas. We waited in anticipation not confident that we would find any plastic in the codent (the 300 micron net basket at the end of our trawl). The portion of the North Atlantic Gyre we were in looked pristine – flawless cobalt blue, no swirling vortex of plastic. But just as Charlie Moore assured us we would find, we found broken, photo-degraded bits of plastic in the codent. The same consistency of plastic that we found on John Smith Bay Beach the day before that was faded, brittle and fragmented. Visibly evident that it had been at sea long enough to break down into unrecognizable plastic products and small enough to look like food to some sea animals.

We trawled for only a half hour the second night. Not only did we find plastics, but we caught 30 myctophids fish. Fish we had hoped to catch to analyze for POPs. (Persistent Organic Pollutants) Not the type of organic like food grown that is better for you. Organic, as in chemicals that are bad for people and the environment.

Another method of collection that is unique to the North Atlantic is collecting sargassum with nets as it breaks passed the bow of the ship and glides along the sides. Researchers on the ship that are not involved in this project join in as they see with their own eyes the amount of plastics we are pulling out of the sargassum. They express their amazement with the successful collection we have here 100s of miles from any continent.

Open Water Research

Today we followed up on a lead from Keep Bermuda Beautiful. They told us that debris washes up on some of the beaches on the South Shore, but mostly in winter.

We headed out with plenty of camera gear and snorkels, not expecting to find too much debris.

We arrived at John Smith's Bay and it is gorgeous.

Two steps into the sand and I saw it. Another step. And another.

"BONNIE!" I yelled and then went further towards the water where the sargassum had washed up. Sargassum is seaweed, by the way.

"BONNIE!" She was trying to get the camera out to film what we were seeing but I kept yapping because what I saw, with every step and every glance, was little bits of plastic. Not just a few pieces of litter, not just a few pieces of plastic in one clump of sargassum.

These pieces of plastic are fragmented and weathered, just like you'd expect from something that's been floating in the ocean for awhile.

And they are everywhere on this small beach.

It's almost midnight and we ship out tomorrow so we've added this small clip but we have more footage to sort through tomorrow so stay tuned and tell your friends. We should be able to upload videos from the ship.

Thanks to everyone who helped us get here. We've learned so much and we're not even on the water yet.

Posted by Jennifer O'Keefe