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

Here's the latest from Marcus Eriksen aboard the Sea Dragon - plastic in every single sample collected thus far, illustrated above with a shot of trawl #3, a slurry of fish and plastic particles.

Twelve days from Rio de Janiero sailing out on an eastern tack puts us 600 miles south of Ascension Island, a dot in the middle of the South Atlantic, closer to Africa than South America.  We’ve conducted 18 trawls of the sea surface since then.  Every one contains plastic.

This is the first of three expeditions into the South Atlantic Subtropical Gyre, a counterclockwise rotation of the ocean bounded by coastal currents, westerly tradewinds, and the Southern Ocean.  In the middle of the gyre, winds and waves slow down.  It’s where debris accumulates.  Nikolai Maximenko, of the International Pacific Research Center, has computed where debris in the ocean might go, based on the real movements of drifter buoys currently at sea.  Working with Nikolai to plan our routes, our first expedition is taking us through the northern edge of the predicted accumulation zone.



Out first trawl began 200 miles off the coast of Brazil, outside the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).  Bits of plastic and zooplankton filled the cod end of the trawl.  The trawl is a 25cm. x 60cm. box that skims the surface.  The 333 micron mesh net catches almost everything that passes through.

We're nearing the end of our first venture into the South Atlantic Gyre, with 2 upcoming expeditions  that will span the entire ocean - from South America to Africa and back. We have now seen plastic pollution in 4 of the world's 5 subtropical gyres.