Every since humans figured out that wood floats, they’ve sailed the seven seas in search of adventure, escape or treasure. Columbus hoped to find new land, Marco Polo sought exotic spices, and Gaugin had a passion to throw off the confines of civilization for a tropical paradise. But sailing in search of plastic? Santa Monica residents Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins are part of an elite group. The founding members of 5 Gyres, a nonprofit dedicated to zero tolerance for plastic pollution, have launched their craft, the 72-foot, steel-hulled Sea Dragon, to map our plastic footprint in each of the gyres—whirlpools in the ocean where currents converge and form massive accumulations of plastic waste.
There are five major oceanic gyres worldwide, with several smaller gyres in Alaska and Antarctica. The largest one, the North Pacific Gyre, has been estimated variously at twice the size of Texas to three times the size of the United States. Since it is fluid and much of it is small pieces suspended just below the surface, the actual dimensions are difficult to measure and impossible to gauge via satellite. Suffice to say, it’s enormous.
Cummins and Eriksen are cool, eclectic and passionate. They have survived hurricanes in the middle of the Indian Ocean, biked from Vancouver to Tijuana handing out plastic-packed ocean water gyre samples to everyone from Gavin Newsom to Google staffers, and are building a paddleboard out of cigarette lighters, which they’ll use for educating kids. They even invested their honeymoon money to create 5 Gyres.
WLT freelancer Kat Thomas caught up with these intrepid sailors at Funnel Mill (a Santa Monica coffee shop where beverages are served in reusable glasses).
WLT: Most people like to sail to exotic or challenging destinations. What drew you to the gyres?
Anna Cummins: We were both working with Captain Charles Moore and his Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach. As more people became aware of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch they were continuously asking: “What about other oceans?” The 5 Gyres started in January when we visited the Northern Atlantic Gyre. With the help of Algalita and Pangaea, we sailed from St. Thomas to the Azores collecting samples.
Marcus Eriksen: We’ve now been to three of the five gyres. We’re traveling to the Southern Atlantic gyre in August, and the Southern Pacific gyre in 2011.
Have you found these plastic islands at all the gyres you’ve been to?
Marcus: Yes, but they’re not islands. That’s the picture that people have in their heads, but in reality it’s a soupy plastic mess.
Anna: It’s not plastic jugs floating out there. Most of the pieces are the size of peas. Sunlight and wave action cause the floating plastics to fragment.
Marcus: Much of these samples include bunches of nurdles, pre-production industrial plastic pellets, the base stuff that is used to create items such as forks and straws.
Anna: We collected 35 samples from our Northern Atlantic trip; all of them contained significant amounts of plastic and nurdles. During our 2008 voyage, Algalita collected 671 foraging fish; more than a third contained particles of plastic in their stomachs.
Marcus: The big question is what effect this is having on the food chain. It multiplies exponentially: foraging fish are eaten by larger fish, which are then eaten by still larger fish.
Anna: The 5 Gyres is really dealing with the larger issue of bioaccumulation. There’s a significant link between the chemicals in those pea-size pieces of plastic and the sushi you eat for dinner.
What are the 5 Gyres doing to get the word out?
Marcus: In the scientific community we’re writing journal articles, but building boats out of plastic bottles seems to have a bigger impact on the average person.
Anna: Marcus made a boat from 15,000 plastic bottles and sailed it from Long Beach to Hawaii. Next he’s going to make a boat out of plastic straws.
Marcus: I’m going to sail it down the Seine and the Thames to educate the people of Europe about the plastic problem.
Okay, it is really easy to hear this and get thoroughly depressed. What can we do about it?
Anna: The plastic companies focus on recycling as a solution, but that’s just a solution to the symptom. We need to deal with the cause. The real problem is our plastic consumption.
Marcus: Take the challenge. Walk into any grocery store and try to fill a cart with products not made from, packaged in, or labeled with plastic. It’s impossible.
Anna: What really needs to happen is extended producer responsibility, or EPR. We need to encourage companies to make products that are truly recyclable.
What about cleaning up the garbage patches in the gyres?
Anna: It doesn’t make sense to go out there and clean it up. If you skim the gyres you’re also taking out the marine life.
Marcus: The gyres are constantly moving. Eventually they do kick the trash out and the islands catch it. For example, in Hawaii the southernmost island is completely covered in trash. It makes a million times more sense to organize beach cleanups. The plastic comes to you.
Can we then recycle the plastic we retrieve?
Anna: It’s difficult to recycle plastic when it’s dirty. Most of it goes into landfills. But smaller islands, such as Bermuda, don’t have that option because of space issues, so they burn their trash. These low temperature burns create unhealthy gas byproducts, like furans and dioxins.
Marcus: But there are some exciting technologies emerging. There’s a company, PyroGenesis, that has created a way to burn trash using thermal plasma. Since it’s burned at 12,000 degrees, the byproducts are base elements and obsidian, which the FDA has approved as a road aggregate. This is really amazing for islands that are importing coal and oil—it gives them the potential to use their own trash as energy.
You two just returned from the Gulf?
Marcus: Yes, I grew up there. It’s so sad—complete degradation of the environment. In my mind I had a snapshot of it when I was twelve years old, all lush and green. Now you walk the beaches and it’s nurdles and blobs of oil.
*What You Can Do
We all know that on a large scale we need to change public policy, and individually we should support the plastic bag ban, but what are some other things we can do?
• Kick it old school with shampoo bars. So much of what we use to wash our bodies comes in plastic push pumps or shampoo bottles.
• Talk to your local food joint about non-plastic solutions. Request coffee shops offer actual mugs and restaurants use real silverware.
• Use the deli counter. When you buy cheese ask that they wrap it in paper not plastic.
• Hold the straw. Make it your motto when you go out to restaurants.
• Book a leg on a 5 Gyres research trip. Ever wanted to sail around the world on a 72-foot sloop? Most trips run around $5,000.
• Use powdered cleaning products. Wash your clothes with dry soap, not liquid detergent sold in plastic jugs.
• Buy real food instead of super processed. Look for items with minimum and/or compostable packaging.
Photo of Anna Cummins and Marcus Ericksen courtesy Anthony Thomas
Photo of Azores courtesy of Marcus Ericksen
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There are more ways you can help. Visit http://www.dreamsailraffle.com or post this website on your page. Ocean Voyage Institute is currently raising funds to send out a team of volunteers to collect the debris that have accumulated in the North Pacific Gyre, as well as researching environmentally friendly methods to dispose of this waste.