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

We pulled the trawl aboard and Carolyn grabbed the end of the net to remove the cod end. "There's something huge inside," she said. Of the hundreds of trawls we've done over many years, it was a surprise to find a glass float in the manta trawl. We all peered into its eerie eye to see if we could see through it. These are not made for the Asian fishing fleets any longer, so this one could have been trapped in gyre currents for decades. They used to float nets, and they range in size from as big as a tennis ball to the size of a beach ball. This one slid easily into the 15cm tube at the end of the net.

It's pleasant to find for it's historical significance, and that it's relatively inert compared to the modern plastic counterparts, which we see out here daily. The polyethlene and polypropylene floats made today, along with every other piece of plastic, are sponges for many persistent organic pollutants. These POP's are sorbed onto and into the surface of plastic in high concentrations relative to ambient seawater. One big question scientists are answering now is whether plastic ingested be marine life transports those POPs into their bodies. Are the fish we harvest to feed the world contaminated by the plastic they mistake for food? We need that answer.

We still find glass and metal materials at sea, like lightbulbs, glass bottles and metal parts attached to floating cigarette lighters. Glass, metal, wood & paper, and plastic all behave differently. Glass is inert. Metal will oxidize and go away. Wood & paper will biodegrade. Plastic doesn't do any of these, or at least on time scales that compare to the rate of new plastic entering the sea. Should we return to glass for fishing floats? Or wood, metal or bioplastic? Observing how we all eyed the eye of the glass float with envy, I would be happy to see the plastic ones become historical relics.