Plastic pollution
 
"Styrofoam cups, six-pack beverage rings work there way to spiraling current off Newfoundland, where such debris recently hampered efforts to find a downed airliner or its passengers Plastic refuse in ocean hinders rescue efforts Published: The Globe and Mail, September 29, 1990, FOCUS BY DEBORAH JONES, Halifax WHEN a Boeing 727 airliner went down off Newfoundland earlier this month, the high point of the intense and fruitless eight-day search was the sighting of what a rescue crew thought was an orange life raft. A ship was diverted to the spot, but the object it eventually picked up turned out to be garbage, an orange tarpaulin bobbing on the surface of the grey water. Ocean garbage, aside from being a lethal hazard for marine life and a deterrent to tourism and seafood consumption, is increasingly a problem for the Halifax search and rescue centre. Garbage sightings divert the attention of people desperately seeking debris from a stricken ship or aircraft that would point the way to possible survivors in a life raft. "If the water was clean, we'd have known every sighting was from the airplane," said Major Bill MacDonald, who co-ordinated the search for the Peruvian plane that went down 300 kilometres southeast of Cape Race, Nfld. Sixteen people are assumed to have been killed. "With the water dirty, you don't know what (an object) is until you get a ship over there to pick it up. It was a major problem." Major MacDonald has a long list in his Halifax office of material reported by searchers who looked for plane debris this month. It includes a large tractor tire, white-and-blue rectangular objects that could have been aircraft seats, fishing buoys, aluminum boxes, a pair of white coveralls, netting and an assortment of unidentified orange objects. The Peruvian plane crashed, after sending a message that it was running out of fuel, somewhere in a vast area where the Gulf Stream current meets the Labrador current. The giant ocean currents carry garbage from thousands of kilometres away and concentrate it several hundred kilometres off Newfoundland's shore, Major MacDonald said. "Anything that would be dumped overboard by New York, or up by the west coast of Labrador, would come through that area. A lot of it stays there for a while. It just goes around in circles and eventually gets kicked out and goes up with the Gulf Stream to Iceland, or goes back down to New York." While the garbage hampered the search for the Peruvian airplane, the incident also created high-profile publicity for the problem of non- biodegradable garbage in water. Ocean pollution in Canada has not struck the general public's consciousness, but it is a fact of life for people who live near almost any coast in the world. In Halifax, beachcombing invariably turns up used condoms, plastic tampon applicators and the odd syringe, possibly flushed into the city's sewers, which discharge untreated sewage into Halifax Harbor. In the late eighties, demand for fish dropped throughout North America after several news reports about garbage, including medical waste such as contaminated syringes, washing up on shores on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The problem has forced the closing of beaches. A recent boat trip on Georges Bank off southwestern Nova Scotia in the Gulf of Maine, often touted as the richest fishing ground in the world, revealed floating garbage bobbing in every direction. All around, the waves turned up plastic items ranging from bread bags and supermarket sacks to bottles used to hold cleaning fluid and engine oil. On Sable Island, a giant sandbar east of Nova Scotia, biologist Zoe Lucas has documented, in an informal two-year study, thousands of items of mostly plastic garbage washing ashore from elsewhere. They include fishing nets, balloons (probably released during festive occasions somewhere in North America), bags, bottles, ropes, foam-plastic cups and six-pack rings. During her study, Ms Lucas rescued dozens of marine animals entangled in plastic and counted hundreds of others that died from eating plastic or getting entangled in it. Marine turtles, many of which belong to endangered species, are especially affected by garbage because clear plastic resembles jellyfish, their favorite food. Once the plastic is inside a turtle's mouth, the mouth and throat structure forces it into the stomach, where it blocks digestion. Ms Lucas's study is the only systematic research done in Canada on ocean garbage. But environmentalists say any public research money would be better spent on campaigns to stop the pollution than on more studies. Ishbel Butler of the clean-ocean committee of the Maritimes Fishermen's Union agrees. Citing figures from the Centre for Marine Conservation in Washington, she said each recreational boater creates 700 grams of plastic garbage per day, the world's merchant vessels dump at least 450,000 plastic containers per day and the world's commercial fishing fleets discard more than 30 million kilograms of plastic packaging and 100,000 tonnes of plastic fishing gear every year, all into the oceans. "They're all a mess, all the oceans," said Dalhousie University marine biologist Hal Whitehead, who studies whales and has observed surface plastic pollution. "There's also fishing nets stuck down deep catching things, birds, seals, fish, crabs, everything. A lot of people are very worried about the levels of pollution in many marine mammals, and especially those which live near the coast." Ocean garbage may be pervasive, but the handful of Canadian environmentalists working on the issue say it is largely ignored, likely because most Canadians don't see it. Copyright Deborah Jones 1990 Marine trash a spreading problem, says researcher Published: The Globe and Mail,May 29, 1989, pg. A.1 BY DEBORAH JONES, HALIFAX Most of the time, Zoe Lucas lives far from civilization on a giant sandbar off Nova Scotia's coast. Civilization reaches her daily on Sable Island, though, in the form of trash washed ashore by the Atlantic Ocean. Ms Lucas, a 38-year-old biologist, knows first-hand about marine pollution by non-biodegradable items. She and growing numbers of environmentalists and fishermen say it is Canada 's biggest unrecognized environmental problem. As well as being physically ugly, trash dumped in the oceans and lakes from coastal communities, boats and oil rigs kills marine life. But nobody knows how much garbage there is in Canadian waters, or what effects it has, because almost no research has been done in Canada. ''The reason there haven't been any major studies done is this problem hasn't been an issue in Canada,'' said Richard Buxton, a Halifax consultant who organized a recent national conference in Halifax on plastic debris in marine areas. ''It's been considered a cosmetic problem.'' Until recently in Nova Scotia, solid marine waste was largely out of sight and mind, adrift somewhere in the Atlantic tides. But material piling up on beaches has begun to generate public concern, and many say the amount of garbage is increasing. People have also recognized a local problem because of news reports from the United States about garbage, including medical waste such as contaminated syringes, washing up on shores and forcing the closing of beaches on the eastern seaboard for the past two summers. Ms Lucas, whose official and unrelated research for several Canadian universities involves a herd of wild horses on Sable Island, conducted her own voluntary two-year research project cataloguing garbage on island beaches. Along the way, she says, she rescued dozens of hapless marine animals entangled in the plastic and counted more than a hundred others less fortunate, such as seals, sea birds and marine turtles, that died from eating plastic or getting entangled in it. ''Marine animals haven't any instincts to avoid plastic,'' Ms Lucas said in an interview. ''Recognizing the difference between a floating piece of plastic and a jellyfish doesn't seem to be possible for a marine turtle. ''We are finding marine turtles washing ashore with sheets of plastic blocking their guts. . . . Marine turtles are an endangered species and the plastic pollution is yet another hazard that may push them over the edge.'' She catalogued more than 200 items of litter per kilometre arriving ashore every month on the remote island, where only a weather station and occasional researchers are located. ''None of the litter is derived from the beach itself,'' she added. Ms Lucas, who has a collection of her garbage finds in her Halifax apartment as well as gruesome pictures of animals killed by trash, said 90 per cent of the garbage is plastic. Because plastic floats while metal garbage sinks, she believes her research shows just the tip of a much larger problem. Mr. Buxton, a lawyer with an interest in environmental issues, said that aside from a study in the Arctic Ocean on refuse from drilling operations, Ms Lucas' volunteer study is the most comprehensive one done in Canada on marine debris. As part of the Halifax conference on the subject, sponsored partly by the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, officials in Winnipeg tried to find out the extent of the problem in lakes in the Prairies and the North. Of about 60 replies to 170 questionnaires sent to remote fishing lodges, nearly half said plastic debris is a problem. A Halifax-based radio program recently asked listeners in the Maritimes to phone in accounts of garbage washed ashore or dumped on beaches. About 30 people reported hundreds of items, mainly plastic. The assortment included the usual tampon applicators, bags, bottles, ropes, nets, Styrofoam cups and six-pack rings, as well as a syringe, a bicycle, a car engine, a washing machine and a lawnmower. While the larger refuse was probably dumped on the beaches, smaller plastic items wash ashore after being dumped from boats or off wharves. ''It's one of the few environmental problems that every individual can do something about,'' Mr. Buxton said. ''It costs nothing for people not to litter.'' But until people stop littering, he said, it is going to present an increasing problem for the tourism industry, which portrays Canada as a pristine environment and its coasts as uncluttered. The Maritime Fishermen's Union recently began urging fishermen to stop dumping refuse such as buoys, beer cans and plastic packaging over the sides of their boats. Mr. Buxton wants the federal government to introduce laws, as other countries have done through the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships, to prevent vessels leaving Canada from dumping waste just outside Canadian waters. ''Canada has got a very good environmental image overseas,'' Mr. Buxton said. ''But on this issue, Canada has been seen as a laggard.'' While plastic trash in general is causing concern, Mr. Buxton and Ms Lucas say two items in particular - fishing nets and balloons - are special problems. Lost or broken and discarded nets of synthetic material can drift in the water for months or years, catching animals in their deadly webs. And Ms Lucas said millions of helium-filled balloons released annually across North America for festive occasions often end up in the oceans, where animals eat them and choke to death. Copyright Deborah Jones 1989 About this website: Text and photos by Deborah Jones except where otherwise noted. Please contact me for reprint rights. All material copyrighted ../About.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0
Oceans awash in non-biodegradable garbage
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