You know that expression "Can't see the forest for the
trees"? During my research regarding plastic on Florida's beaches I was so
focused on types of plastic and East versus West coast, I didn't seem to notice
an obvious detail in my debris map:
At the open house for the new IMES facility, Chad Macfie from the
Marine Science Center noted that the majority of my plastic on the East Coast was
towards the South. In all honesty, there could be a discrepancy in my data
because I had not fully established my research methods and protocol, yet, when
I started collecting plastic in the North. Also, if (during my project) I had collected plastic in a
touristy area such as Daytona Beach I would've added a northern location with
hundreds of pieces of plastic. However, of the hundreds of pieces I've come
across on Daytona Beach's shores after the completion of my project, there weren't many I considered to be
"ocean plastic" but mainly items left behind by visitors.
The majority of "ocean plastic" seems to have
washed on to the East coast's southern shores and this may be due to, as Chad pointed
out, the Gulf Stream's vicinity to the beaches in the south. To test whether the Gulf Stream and surface
currents are washing debris onto Florida's beaches, a long-term drift bottle research project could shed some light on the matter. Just need several hundred
bottles and a ship that would take us out to the Gulf Stream somewhere between
the Keys and South America. ;)
Interesting--when I was at the conference someone had completed a study of ocean current impacts on ocean plastic location...they used something called a drift card; a plastic (grrrr) coated card with contact information. When someone found it they were asked to use the contact information and report the pick-up location. The researcher got a lot of good information and created a map based on his/her findings. I only wondered if a permit was required to do this--something I plan to investigate so that we can actually do something similar to this.
ReplyDeleteAnother idea is to build a drift buoy--I now have the plans (again from the conference). We could then enlist the help of a fisherman/woman to release the buoy and track it. Here are some links for your reading pleasure... www.studentdrifters.org and www.nefsc.noaa.gov/drifter Let's keep working on this great project!!
Hmmm, according to the article in my blog entry (can be accessed by clicking on the "drift bottle project" link) it can take years for some of these bottles to appear on shores and some wash ashore beaches that aren't frequented by anyone. I evidently don't know if they developed a special type plastic coating for those cards but based on what I know about plastic combined with sun and waves I could imagine quite a few of these cards breaking apart before they ever make it to a shore.
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