There’s a scary amount of plastic in the ocean. Here’s who put it there This story was reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Marine scientists have long known that plastic pollution in the ocean is a huge problem. The most visible sign of it is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an accumulation of waste (actually spanning several distinct patches) floating in the ocean. It’s at least twice the size of Texas and can be seen from space. This pollution has an incalculably lethal effect on everything from plankton to whales. So just how much plastic is there? If we want to crack down on all that plastic, knowing where it all comes from could be as important as knowing how much there is. The last step is to estimate how much of the mismanaged coastal plastic waste actually washes into the sea. The chart below shows the worst offenders, in terms of total plastic pollution in the ocean in 2010, using data from the study. That’s right: China alone dumped nearly 5 billion pounds of plastic waste into the ocean in 2010.
Don’t look now but you’re shedding plastic Fleece-wearers beware. Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara found that a single fleece jacket can lose as many as 250,000 synthetic fibers, or 1.7 grams of plastic, in the laundry — which adds up. All those fibers travel from your washing machine into your local wastewater treatment plant, where 40 percent end up in rivers, lakes, and oceans. Researchers found these microfibers all over the planet, from the bottom of the Indian Ocean to Midwestern farmland. The study, which was funded by Patagonia, estimates that the amount of fibers that are released into waterways each year could be equivalent of nearly 12,000 plastic grocery bags. Even Patagonia and other clothing manufacturers that use recycled microplastics in their garments don’t avoid shedding little bits of it into the ocean. For more on the big impact our synthetic clothing addiction has on the planet, watch our video on below.
Agir contre la Pollution Ne baissez pas les bras ! Quelques recettes simples pourraient significativement changer les choses. Voici comment agir contre la pollution: Ne jetez rien dans la nature ! >> Chapitre suivant : L'environnement Plastic waste responsible for nearly 92% life-threatening cases in marine life | Customs Today Newspaper MEXICO: According to a new study thousands of individual animals from hundreds of marine species including every kind of sea turtle and around half of marine mammals have encountered plastic, glass, and other garbage in the ocean. Often the encounters are fatal. In some cases they may be helping push some beleaguered species towards extinction in the wild. Those are some of the findings in the most comprehensive look at the effects of debris on marine wildlife since 1997. Co-authors Sarah Gall and Richard Thompson, marine biologists at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom, looked in 340 different publications for reports about animal encounters with marine trash. They found that 693 species of marine animals had some sort of interaction with human-made debris, with 17 percent of them listed with some degree of vulnerability to extinction on the International Union for Conservation of Nature red list.
Sea Turtle Recovers After Swallowing 4 Feet Of Fishing Line An endangered Kemp’s ridley sea turtle was extremely fortunate to be at the right place at the right time early in June. She was pulled from a shipping channel near Charleston, S.C., by a South Carolina Department of Natural Resources (SCDNR) crew that was there doing a random sampling of marine life. Monofilament fishing line was wrapped around the turtle’s head and mouth, and embedded in one of her flippers. But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The turtle, who the STCC staff named “Peach,” was dying. “She’s the luckiest unlucky turtle we’ve ever treated.” Love This? Thanks for subscribing! The state-of-the-art STCC opened at the South Carolina Aquarium just one month before Peach was rescued. To access the fishing line, Boylan had to make an incision in Peach’s groin area, then reach in and grasp part of her intestine. Boylan cut through a knot and successfully pulled out foot after foot of monofilament. T. You can track Peach’s journey on the seaturtle.org website.
Changement climatique : des solutions existent pour 9 Français sur 10 Le Monde.fr | • Mis à jour le | Par Pierre Le Hir Inquiets, mais pas résignés. Tels apparaissent les Français face au changement climatique, selon un sondage réalisé par l'institut Ipsos entre le 19 et le 26 janvier, auprès d'un échantillon de 995 personnes, pour le compte de l'agence Havas-Paris. Premier constat, le climato-scepticisme n'est plus de mise. Les Français, dont 89 % ont « l'impression » que le climat a changé au cours des vingt dernières années, sont 80 % à penser que ce changement est « dû en grande partie à l'activité humaine », 20 % seulement considérant qu'il est « dû en grande partie à des facteurs naturels ». Plus de trois sur quatre se déclarent personnellement « très inquiets » (20 %) ou « plutôt inquiets » (57 %) des conséquences possibles. Que redoutent-ils le plus ? Face à ces inquiétudes, ils éprouvent majoritairement un sentiment d'« urgence » (52 %), mais aussi une nécessité de « mobilisation » (30 %). Qu'en espèrent-ils ?
Sailing Seas of Plastic - Interactive Data Visualisation About the Study M. Eriksen, L.C.M. Plastic pollution is ubiquitous throughout the marine environment, yet estimates of the global abundance and weight of floating plastics have lacked data, particularly from the Southern Hemisphere and remote regions. Using an oceanographic model of debris dispersal calibrated by our data, and correcting for wind-driven vertical mixing, we estimate a minimum of 5.25 trillion particles weighing 268,940 tons. Read the publication
Barnacles are accidentally eating our plastic trash Barnacles in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are attaching themselves to trash and eating little plastic particles. Researchers don’t yet know the implications of these findings, but it’s a safe bet that they’re not good. American scientists inspected the gastrointestinal tracts of 385 gooseneck barnacles collected from the garbage patch, aka the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, and found microplastic in a third of them. Some specimens had a single piece of plastic in their stomach, while others had gobbled down as many as 30. Miriam Goldstein of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography described her research in the blog Deep Sea News: Gooseneck barnacles look kind of freaky. The barnacles are eaten by crabs, nudibranchs, and other marine creatures that are hunted, in turn, by birds, fish, and dolphins. As Goldstein says, it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to learn that barnacles are eating the ubiquitous plastic waste. Here’s what some of the plastic barnacle food looked like.
Behind the Relaunch of The New York Times Magazine Photo Welcome to the new New York Times Magazine. For the past four months, as we’ve been putting out the magazine you read every weekend, we’ve also been busying ourselves behind the scenes, crafting something new and different. It is as if we have been bidding our dinner guests adieu each week, busing the dessert plates and then hurrying out to the garage to tinker with our strange creation under a flickering bulb. We have used the hammer and the tongs but perhaps not the blowtorch; we sought to manufacture a magazine that would be unusual, surprising and original but not wholly unfamiliar. To this end we have made many alterations. Continue reading the main story Slide Show In the interest of being clear about what we have done, this letter will introduce you to some of the most notable changes. The redesign was led by our design director, Gail Bichler, a 10-year veteran of The Times, along with our art director, Matt Willey. Now, on to some of the new pages:
Here’s all the plastic in the ocean, measured in whales Let’s see how closely you know your marine doom-and-gloom: Just how much plastic can be found in the oceans? A) A lot. B) A whole helluva lot. C) Both A and B. D) All of the above. While those answers are all FINE, now we can get a little more specific thanks to a study by the 5 Gyres institute. This was actually less plastic than the researchers expected to find at the surface, but they suspect the missing plastic is likely being eaten by organisms, or otherwise mulched by the gyres, and sinking deeper into the oceans.