This new paper published in Scientific Reports looks into the origin of plastic that we found
here in the garbage patch in the North Pacific. We already knew that about half of the mass of
plastic in the North Pacific was fishing nets. But we also look at those hard plastics.
The rest is composed of hard plastic fragments. And we see that most of it is actually also coming from fishing activities.
And so we estimate that about 80 percent
of the plastic we found here in the North Pacific is coming from fishing activity.
We're currently at Wageningen University and Research where we are doing research on the
floating plastic debris that we collected with System 001/B. So what's really unique here is that
we have large quantities of plastic debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and it allows us
to really dive deeper into questions like: what do we find there in the garbage patch? How much do we find?
Where is it coming from? Where is it going to? How long is it staying there?
And in order to answer these questions, we really need to have large quantities of plastic together,
really a sample that's representing what's actually out there afloat.
This is exactly the information we're looking for, and also this. And maybe we can find someone that can actually identify it?
Yeah, it's interesting to see that with the method The Ocean Cleanup is using
that it's both very small plastic items, up to a few millimeters, and the extremely big items,
like this one item that is two meters in size. And that makes it interesting,
we have a bit from everything: bigger objects that we can identify and smaller objects that
we also weigh, et cetera but obviously you can't identify them any more.
What we're actually doing is we sort every piece of litter into 120 categories
and then when we have sorted all those items in those categories,
then we do a more deeper analysis of little items within such a category.
Just like detectives, we're looking at every single item to see if we can find any clues that can help us identify
where they're from, why did they end up in the sea and perhaps what could be a solution to prevent this?
There are several reasons why fishing gear can be found in the ocean. Usually we will use the term
ALDFG for abandoned, lost or otherwise discarded fishing gear. The fishermen can basically abandon their gear.
This can be for several reasons safety reasons, a storm so they can no longer
go back and retrieve their gear. The fishermen can lose their gear.
What if the GPS signal gets lost and they cannot retrieve and go back to the geographical location
where they left it? And discarded is basically that this item is no longer needed
and it's been discarded into the ocean.
One of the objectives of the study was also to look at what is the type of
fishing industry that is basically linked to this plastic debris. And we actually use also a model
to help us understand better where it's coming from.
And based on the data, we found out that 48% of the fishing equipment
that we found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is linked to trawling.
This is different here from previous research that we've been doing because in the past we've been
doing mostly characterization and quantification of plastic here in the garbage patch.
But here we've been really looking at trying to understand the origin of this plastic and see
what are the sources for this plastic to enter the ocean. What are the reasons for this plastic to end up in the ocean?
And because, you know, we are focusing on cleaning the ocean here, it's important,
but we don't want to do that forever, right. So we want to address the sources eventually and make sure
that, you know, there's no more plastic entering the ocean. And so at The Ocean Cleanup we've been
focusing on addressing the sources in rivers by intercepting plastic in rivers. But here in the North Pacific,
we find that a lot of the plastic we collect is actually coming not from land,
but from fishing activities, from the sea directly. We often look at developing economies as contributors
of plastic pollution into the ocean. So for the North Pacific Ocean, that would be, you know,
Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia or Central America, South America. And surprisingly,
actually, we don't find many markings that come from those countries, but instead we find
markings that come from industrialized nations, big nations, large economies, and basically
mostly four countries that was contributing to that pollution. Here for this hard plastic,
we found plastic coming from Japan, plastic coming from China, plastic coming from Korea and plastic coming from the U.S.
We also believe that we have a large contribution of Japan also because
of the tsunami that happened in 2011. And there really is a lot of debris into the North Pacific.
Sourcing fishing gear is a huge challenge. And one of the reasons why it is a huge challenge is:
when we find a piece of plastic, we can see the country of origin, but very often we might have,
for example, USA fishermen that will be buying equipment from China. So when we find the debris
in the middle of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, we see that the manufacturing country is China,
but in fact, the owner of this equipment might not be from that country. So it's a very delicate subject
and we shouldn't extrapolate and make wider conclusions.
The plastic debris that we find in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
is actually very different from the plastic that we may find in coastal environments.
It's mostly plastic that will persist a very long time in the environment.
Fishing nets, eel traps, buoys, oyster spacers and all of this hard plastic will remain trapped
in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. And according to the simulations that were made in this specific publication,
there is a low percentage of this plastic, at least for seven years simulation,
that will reach the coastal environment.
When we think in terms of coastal pollution and
plastic items being emitted from rivers, the type of debris that we find is very different.
It's more single use plastic items, it's more weak polymers that will degrade and fragment faster
that might sink. It will remain very close to the coastal environment.
Very rarely this plastic will make its way all the way offshore to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
So these are two completely different sources and we should work on both of them.
One thing that that I take away from here is that, you know, we've been studying sources of plastic pollution into the ocean
for quite a long time. And we've had our eyes on developing economies for quite a long time...
looking at the waste management systems, quite often you see that plastic pollution is also a story of poverty.
But here it's not the case. It's you know, it really is coming from rich economies
and from industrialized fishing nations, and just shows that
the fishing industry has a really strong role to play here, and and it's very important that we address this issue here.
Our main goal and objective for all of us is to basically turn off the tap
and stop plastic being emitted into the ocean. And the truth is that most of the emissions coming into the ocean
are still coming from land and being emitted from rivers worldwide.
So it's still very important to intercept this debris before it goes into the ocean.
But when we look at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, closing the tap for this specific region,
if more than three quarters of the plastic comes from the fishing industry, it's a hard challenge, and we cannot do this alone.
It's a global issue. It has to be solved globally. We are mostly in international waters,
so we need to collaborate with other organizations that are specialized in discussing with fishermen,
with the fishing industry, that are specialized in policies and regulations.
We are doing research, we are trying to answer scientific questions, but we really hope that organizations worldwide
will be using the data to help think further about how to solve this huge issue.