Another Environmental
Claim Proven to be Over Hyped
From Oregon State University:
Oceanic “garbage patch” not nearly
as big as portrayed in media
Further claims that the oceans are filled
with more plastic than plankton, and that the patch has been growing tenfold
each decade since the 1950s are equally misleading, pointed out Angelicque “Angel” White, an assistant professor of oceanography at Oregon State.
“There is no doubt that the amount
of plastic in the world’s oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration
undermines the credibility of scientists,” White said. “We
have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates; we don’t need the
hyperbole. Given the observed concentration of plastic in the North Pacific, it
is simply inaccurate to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have
observed an exponential increase in plastic.”
White has pored
over published literature and participated in one of the few expeditions solely
aimed at understanding the abundance of plastic debris and the associated
impact of plastic on microbial communities. That expedition was part of
research funded by the National Science Foundation through C-MORE, the Center for Microbial
Oceanography: Research and Education.
The studies have shown is that if you look
at the actual area of the plastic itself, rather than the entire North Pacific
subtropical gyre, the hypothetically “cohesive” plastic patch is actually less
than 1 percent of the geographic size of
“The amount of plastic out there
isn’t trivial,” White said. “But using the highest concentrations ever reported
by scientists produces a patch that is a small fraction of the state of
Another way to look at it, White said, is
to compare the amount of plastic found to the amount of water in which it was
found. “If we were to filter the surface area of the ocean equivalent to a
football field in waters having the highest concentration (of plastic) ever
recorded,” she said, “the amount of plastic recovered would not even extend to
the 1-inch line.”
Recent research by scientists at the Woods
Hole Oceanographic Institution found that the amount of plastic, at least in
the Atlantic Ocean, hasn’t increased since the mid-1980s – despite greater
production and consumption of materials made from plastic, she pointed out.
“Are we doing a better job of preventing
plastics from getting into the ocean?” White said. “Is more plastic sinking out
of the surface waters? Or is it being more efficiently broken down? We just
don’t know. But the data on hand simply do not suggest that ‘plastic patches’
have increased in size. This is certainly an unexpected conclusion, but it may
in part reflect the high spatial and temporal variability of plastic
concentrations in the ocean and the limited number of samples that have been
collected.”
The hyperbole about plastic patches
saturating the media rankles White, who says such
exaggeration can drive a wedge between the public and the scientific community.
One recent claim that the garbage patch is as deep as the
“Most plastics either sink or float,” White
pointed out. “Plastic isn’t likely to be evenly distributed through the top 100
feet of the water column.”
White says there is growing interest in
removing plastic from the ocean, but such efforts will be costly, inefficient,
and may have unforeseen consequences. It would be difficult, for example, to
“corral” and remove plastic particles from ocean waters without inadvertently
removing phytoplankton, zooplankton, and small surface-dwelling aquatic
creatures.
“These small organisms are the heartbeat of
the ocean,” she said. “They are the foundation of healthy ocean food chains and
immensely more abundant than plastic debris.”
The relationship between microbes and
plastic is what drew White and her C-MORE colleagues to their analysis in the
first place. During a recent expedition, they discovered that photosynthetic
microbes were thriving on many plastic particles, in
essence confirming that plastic is prime real estate for certain microbes.
White also noted that while plastic may be
beneficial to some organisms, it can also be toxic. Specifically, it is
well-known that plastic debris can adsorb toxins such as PCB.
“On one hand, these plastics may help
remove toxins from the water,” she said. “On the other hand, these same
toxin-laden particles may be ingested by fish and seabirds. Plastic clearly
does not belong in the ocean.”
Among other findings, which White believes
should be part of the public dialogue on ocean trash:
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Calculations show that the amount of energy
it would take to remove plastics from the ocean is roughly 250 times the mass
of the plastic itself;
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Plastic also covers the ocean floor,
particularly offshore of large population centers. A recent survey from the
state of
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It is a common misperception that you can
see or quantify plastic from space. There are no tropical plastic islands out
there and, in fact, most of the plastic isn’t even visible from the deck of a
boat;
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There are areas of the ocean largely
unpolluted by plastic. A recent trawl White conducted in a remote section of
water between Easter Island and
There are other issues with plastic, White
said, including the possibility that floating debris may act as a vector for
introducing invasive species into sensitive habitats.
“If there is a takeaway message, it’s that
we should consider it good news that the ‘garbage patch’ doesn’t seem to be as
bad as advertised,” White said, “but since it would be prohibitively costly to
remove the plastic, we need to focus our efforts on preventing more trash from
fouling our oceans in the first place.”
About the OSU
College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences: COAS is internationally recognized
for its faculty, research and facilities, including state-of-the-art computing
infrastructure to support real-time ocean/atmosphere observation and
prediction. The college is a leader in the study of the Earth as an integrated
system, providing scientific understanding to address complex environmental
challenges