5 Gyres - Understanding Plastic Pollution Through Exploration, Education, and Action

The Algarve Coast in southern Portugal is known for having some of the best waves and most beautiful beaches in Europe. It can now boast another attraction: some of the most plasticky beaches in the world, thanks to an accumulation zone caused by a system of rotating currents, including the Gulf Stream, which compose the North Atlantic Garbage Patch.

At the tail-end of the 5 Gyres expedition to the North Atlantic to study marine debris, I went on a ten day tour of Southern Portugal to photo-document beaches of the Algarve Coast and collect nurdles for Dr. Takada’s International Pellet Watch Project. The beaches, for all their international bragging rights for good waves and old-world village charm, were astonishingly trashed. The worst offenders? Derelict fishing shwag and 517 bottle caps – and just as many little blue plastic straw-type items that were afterward identified as cotton swab wands.

In total I spent a day and a half collecting trash on Praia do Amado in Carrapateira. To be honest, it was more of a voyeuristic investigation into our calamitous consumptive habits than a beach cleanup; the latter would be a wasted effort. Thanks to the Gulf Stream currents, this stuff just keeps coming back. Much of the trash on the beach was covered in barnacles and sea scum, and I could tell as soon as I picked up a blue plastic fragment or a slime-coated bottle cap that this junk was definitely cruising around the North Atlantic Gyre before landing here.

The local community, although mostly unaware of the enormity of the garbage brigadoon  off their coasts, was receptive when I talked to them about the blight on their beaches. I spoke with a local surf shop owner, Fabrice Walter from Carrapateira Surf Shop, who is interested in helping to organize community beach cleanups. (Surfrider has a chapter in Portugal but unfortunately they aren’t active in this region). While I was beachcombing, a woman walked up to me and said, “I tried to collect seashells and all I got was plastic!” As a matter of fact, she was right. Whether scanning the tide line or sifting through sand on my hands and knees, the most salient feature of this beach, rather than seashells and beach rocks, was utterly craptastic plastic.