Day 124 - May 29, 2010

Why I collect plastic trash from the beach, and try to spread awareness about the detrimental environmental impacts that it has on us, on marine wildlife and on the planet.

photo courtesy of Wallace J Nichols.

There are to many examples of what motivates me to write The Daily Ocean to include in one post, but I've included a few of them here.

A baby sea turtle has roughly a one in 1,000 chance of making it to adulthood. Sadly, this turtle ate the two plastic bits that you see to the side of the photograph and it killed him.

life guard tower 26 - Ocean Park, Santa Monica CA

trash collected for 20 minutes

3.4 pounds

491.5 pounds total

The above video is of Manuel Maqueda of the Plastic Pollution Coalition and a team of people that went with him to visit Midway. Midway Atoll is part of the outer chains of the Hawaiian Islands leading west into the pacific towards Japan and one of the most isolated locations in the world.

Science knows that over 90% of the plastics out there are under 10 mm in size.

We can't combat the monstrous problem of the plastic pollution in our oceans by cleaning it up. This is a falsity that does not make any sense. Beth Terry, who writes the blog Fake Plastic Fish, recently reiterated something that Capt. Charles Moore of Algalita said on the Colbert Report when he was on recently being interviewed about the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch."

Basically he said - trying to clean the gyre would be like trying to bail out a bath tub with the tap still running.

Here are 10 things we can do about it though courtesy of Team Marine

in their video called the "10 R's"

Please also go to 5 gyres to learn more about all of the oceanic gyres that are clogged with trash and what we can do about it.

The 10 R's by Team Marine from Green Planet on Vimeo.