This newsletter is delivered to you every other Thursday and hopefully provides you with thought-provoking content about the mundane, wacky, and weird. I will be writing until the 75th edition. If you know someone who may enjoy the newsletter, you can share it here.
By 2050, scientists estimate that plastic in the ocean will outweigh fish in the ocean. The excess amount of plastic is most evident in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). The only thing I knew about the GPGP is that it is twice the size of Texas and is made up of a bunch of litter in the Pacific Ocean. Today, we will take a plunge into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. What is it, why does it matter, and do we have a chance of cleaning it up?
The GPGP is the largest of the five offshore plastic accumulation zones in the world’s oceans. It is located halfway between Hawaii and California, but because of the ocean currents, also referred to as gyres, the plastic comes from all over the Pacific.
The patch was discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore, a yachtsman who had sailed through a mishmash of floating plastic on his way from Hawaii back to Los Angeles. He alerted oceanographers and took samples. From there, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was on the world’s radar. Today, there are an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, which is enough for 250 pieces for every human on the planet.
Surprisingly, almost half of the patch is made of plastic fishing nets, lines, and ropes from intensive fishing practices. The other half is mostly plastic film like water bottles and plastic bags.
The GPGP is indeed twice the size of Texas and weighs more than 43,000 cars. A lot of the plastic is considered “microplastics” which have been broken down by the sun and water over time. The problem is they break down into smaller and smaller pieces, but don’t go away. The most common piece of trash, fishing lines, may take up to 600 years to decompose in the ocean, but scientists confess they don’t know an exact number. Here is a scuba diver on a research project for Greenpeace.
Here are a few of the challenges of fighting against the Great Pacific Garbage Patch:
📈 We are addicted to plastics and the use of plastics will continue to grow globally.
🔨 Responsibility - Everyone’s plastic ends up in a patch and no one is responsible for cleaning it up. The ocean falls under international law, but the body of governance is not strong enough to regulate all of the plastic that ends up in the GPGP.
🥫 Floating soup - You can think of it like a soup. There are some items moving along the surface, but there are a lot of microplastics moving up and down a few meters from the surface. While GPGP covers a wide area, it isn’t highly dense. If you are passing by on a Carnival cruise, everything may look okay, but it isn’t until you get down close to the water where you start to see the issue.
It is estimated more than half the sea turtle population have plastic in their stomach. A study, published in Scientific Reports, has found that once a turtle got 14 pieces of plastic in its gut, the likelihood of death increased by 50%. Turtles are not alone in their one-sided fight with plastic, this is happening to all sea life.
Where is all of this plastic coming from?
Almost half of the weight of litter in the GPGP is from fishing gear colloquially called “ghost gear”. Unsurprisingly, ghost gear is particularly prevalent in illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing. The ocean is a vast area and doesn’t have much oversight.
The source of much of the GPGP plastic starts as trash on rivers and river banks. It is transported via the rivers into the swirling ocean currents and ends up in the GPGP. Here is the Yangtze River in China, which flows into the Pacific Ocean.
Future
Ocean plastic is expected to triple by 2050. It is estimated that 1,000 of the world's most polluted rivers are responsible for roughly 80% of the world's plastic pollution. The increased scrutiny of dirty rivers has led some governments like China to start cleaning up their waterways. They are pouring money into new water and sewage treatment centers and stormwater facilities. For instance, in 2020 China opened 39,000 new wastewater treatment facilities! From their investments, they have already seen a dramatic reduction in chemical levels found in their largest rivers.
“The Ocean Cleanup” is the most prominent non-profit tackling cleaning up ocean pollution. Founded in 2013, by a young Dutch engineer Boyan Slat, they have devised ships to become plastic collecting machines. Here is the first model “the interceptor” created in 2018. It is solar-powered and uses machine learning to identify plastic pollution.
The “interceptor” is capable of collecting 200,000 pounds of litter a day. The Ocean Cleanups’ latest barge is called the “system 002”. This 2-minute video explains how it works and makes me more optimistic for the future.
I am skeptical that we will ever fully clean the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but it is great to see countervailing forces against the tide of more and more plastic in our oceans.
Book I’m re-reading
Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett is known worldwide as the master of split-second suspense, but his most beloved and bestselling book tells the magnificent tale of a twelfth-century monk driven to do the seemingly impossible: build the greatest Gothic cathedral the world has ever known.
“Whispersync” supercharges your reading speed because it lets you listen to a book on Audible and catch up to it on Kindle (and vice versa). Pillars of the Earth is a long book so I highly recommend using Whispersync.
New Favorite basketball player to watch
NBA playoffs are in full swing and my hometown Warriors are playing the Memphis Grizzlies this round. The Grizzlies young superstar Ja Morant has stolen the show as the most fun player on the floor. He is a nimble 6’3 and 175 lbs and is arguably the quickest player in the NBA. Plus, he has a hang time longer than a line for Disney World’s space mountain. In game 2, he dropped 47 points, including 15 of the last 17 points for the Grizzlies.
This short 7-minute documentary follows his humble beginnings in a small town in South Carolina and how a bag of Doritos led him to be discovered by a college coach.
Song I am enjoying
Related to the theme of today’s newsletter, it is about the microplastics in the ocean, but with a positive Jack Johnson vibe.
Pic of the Week
My bachelor party in San Diego was a blast! It was so fun to see people from different parts of my life all coming together. Also, wigs are a great option if you want to dial up the fun on a night out.