Oceanographic Research Vessel Alguita

2009-07-12T13:14:00.001-07:00

Styrofoam is a copywrited term for a Dow Chemical insulation material. The generic term for the spongy white cups and take out containers we are all familiar with is expanded polystyrene. Photos of waterborne trash accumulations from urban centers invariably show large quantities of expanded polystyrene containers. When polystyrene - think clear CD cases that crack - is expanded, gas is dispersed into the melted polymer creating innumerable channels and bubbles in the material. This makes it a good insulator for hot beverages and food, and gives it a texture that is easy to handle. It also makes it float, since plain polystyrene is heavier than water. Dr. Anthony Andrady, Algalita Marine Research Foundation’s lead polymer scientist, conducted experiments with different types of plastic in the ocean and on land to determine how they lose flexibility, become brittle, and break down into fragments. He found that all plastics except one, expanded polystyrene, broke down faster on land than in the ocean. For most plastics, heat absorption was the key to rapid embrittlement, and the cooler ocean environment acted as a heat sink, slowing the process. But with expanded polystyrene, the increased access of seawater into the pores of the plastic accelerated breakdown more than the increased heating on land. Dr. Andrady found that expanded polystyrene was the only common plastic to break down faster in the marine environment. When I sampled the Eastern Garbage Patch, halfway between San Francisco and Hawaii in 1999, I only found about 10% of the particles in our trawls were expanded polystyrene. These most probably originated in debris from Asia following the debris highway created by the Kurashio current’s easterly extension. Now that we are nearly two-thirds of the way to Japan, we would expect to see more expanded polystyrene and to see it in a less degraded state. This is indeed what we are finding, little bits, medium sized pieces and big blocks.

As we approach our goal, the International Dateline, (we are now at 175 West Longitude, only 5 meridians to go), we also are seeing more Asian PET drinking water and soda bottles. Since the caps are made of Polypropylene, not PET and degrade faster, when the caps crack, the bottles fill with water and sink, so we don’t find as many of them in the Eastern Garbage Patch. The Asian origin of the debris is corroborated by markings on much of what we are finding. A Taiwanese fishing float stating “Yung Plastic Industry, Republic of China,” a Japanese Coca Cola bottle, a thin piece of plastic film with Chinese Characters and a Japanese survey stake. All of this debris creates an amazing habitat for a great variety of free-floating larvae looking for a place to settle on and grow. According to David Barnes, of the British Antarctic Survey, plastic debris at the surface of the ocean has at least doubled the mass of the organisms living there. Not only are new species showing up on plastic transported to coastal environments where they have never been before, species that normally live in coastal habitats can be found associated with debris in the deep ocean. This is analogous to the introduction of European weeds and pests into the New World, species that displaced and decimated the natives. It has been speculated that this mixing of biota could result in a reduction of species diversity in the ocean by half.

From Captain Charles Moore, sailing toward the dateline aboard ORV Alguita.

2009-07-11T10:24:00.001-07:00

Today was our rest day (although we did set out education trawls and dive for debris still) :). Here are a couple pics. One is the cod end of the trawl underwater, the other is a sunset with debris.

Day 29

2009-07-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

Noon position 35.05N 171.65W

It’s been super calm, and we’ve been taking advantage of these conditions to do some continuous trawling. We are bringing in our third trawl of the day-they have all been thick with plastic. Among some of today’s debris finds: a black plastic bag fragment, bottle caps, and an oil bottle which weaseled its way into the Manta trawl. Notable wildlife find of the day: a Hatchetfish (Captain found this little deep water fish while putting around in the dingy, at the surface-quite a ways from home). I did another fragment count today off the bow: 48 pieces of plastic floated past in 10 minutes. About half the frequency I recorded on July 4th, but still pretty astounding.

While the afternoon trawls were out, we had a string of exciting events. Jeff and Drew jumped in the water with some dive propulsion vehicles (aka underwater scooters) in order to get some more underwater footage of our trawling procedures. Once in the water, they spotted a pair of Mahi and Joel decided to dive in and take advantage of the opportunity to collect a research specimen. After a gypsy call emerging from Drew’s snorkel, Joel was pointed in the direction of the fish. He speared the bull. The big guy was especially feisty and tried to bite Joel’s groin several times. Luckily he was wearing a wetsuit and Mahi don’t have especially fierce teeth. This was Mahi number 13 and at 40lbs he was the biggest we have pulled in so far. After a struggle, we got the fish up on deck and Christiana was able to do her thing. Here is what the resident fish nerd had to say about the findings from her dissection:

“I did not find any plastic in the Mahi’s stomach, but I did find some really interesting creatures. There was a cornucopia of parts that I was able to put together--like a forensic puzzle. I felt like a scientist on CSI: Pacific Gyre. There were parasites, squid beaks and mantles, fish jaw bones and skulls, a crab carapace and claw remnants, and a completely intact lanternfish (Family: Myctophidae). This was an amazing discovery for me because it shows that Mahi feed directly on laternfish. From my research on the laternfish collected from the 2007-2008 gyre voyage, I found that these particular fish had ingested a ridiculous amount of plastic. What we found today is a full circle; humans have created this mess in the ocean and we are now stuck consuming it. I really hope that our efforts out here get people more motivated to prevent this problem from getting worse.”

While it is a significant opportunity to be able to catch this fish for research, there are mixed feelings about the catch and dissection process. Drew recounts his sentiments after getting the opportunity to film the Mahi underwater, “I was a visitor in his domain. He was a majestic and proud. It was sad he had to give his life up for science because he was such a beautiful fish.” Bottom line, the crew of this vessel respects and appreciates the creatures of the ocean-but it has become our burden to dissect and document them in order to wake up the general public to the repercussions of our actions.

After we processed the fish, Captain, Christiana and I went on an expedition this afternoon. Since conditions were so calm, we decided it was high time to take the dingy out. It was bizarre to watch our home for the past several weeks disappear behind us, but at the same time it was nice to escape from the boat for a bit. We cruised along looking for debris, which is a little harder to spot from the low vantage point of the dingy. After a few minutes we ran into a float-which from a distance looked like a large Japanese glass float. It turned out to be a standard buoy. It was a 300mm float made by Yung Plastic Industries Co. in Taiwan. There was a huge population of barnacles layering the lines attached to the buoy and a decent sized community of juvenile Rainbow Runners taking refuge under the debris. We had some time to jump in the water and film the synthetic habitat while we were waiting for the Alguita to catch up with us. Getting the buoy back onto the vessel required a bit of muscle-there were about 100 pounds or so of barnacles attached.

The evening has been spent doing some standard boat housekeeping-hosing decks, cleaning the debris (barnacle shucking needs to happen to help keep the stink down, which ends up wafting into the starboard cabin), sorting out old produce, etc. We are 399 miles out from our desired sampling location and near the 4000 logged mile mark for the trip! Winds are still low and variable at around 5 knots. We have been making a plethora of sail changes the past several days, trying to exploit the few decent bursts of wind we are afforded. The spinnaker is up for now and she requires tons of attention in these light winds to keep her filling. She does a sort of belly dance which is graceful on a large scale.

Day 27

2009-07-08T13:19:00.000-07:00

Noon coordinates: 34.38N 169.20W

July 7th, 2009

Once everyone was up and about this morning, Captain decided it was time to take down the main and put the spinnaker back up. The chute is our best shot at making a decent speed toward our sampling destination. We are running too low on fuel to continue compensating for the weak winds by motor sailing.

As we were prepping to drop the main halyard we discovered the line was jammed in the jammer-not good news. It turned out the repair job from yesterday was more of a problem than a solution; the repaired sheath was the jamming culprit. So, Joel foolishly (in his own words) volunteered to go to the top of the mast and replace the main halyard with the backup halyard. This required hoisting him up 50 feet or so in the boatswain’s chair. Immediately after getting up the mast he spotted a ghost net, which we were unfortunately too preoccupied to retrieve-safety first... Unfortunately for the already motion sensitive Joel, the sway of the vessel is amplified atop the mast. He got seasick and the unsuspecting Captain and I to got doused from above with Joel’s breakfast. One flying hammer later (good thing we had hard hats) and the switch was complete. Joel charged through his bout of seasickness and got the job done, earning the crewmember platinum star for the day.

We were spotting debris left and right, so after the halyard business we put out the Manta and an education trawl. While the Manta trawl samples will be analyzed back at the lab, the education samples will be used for outreach purposes. In fact, Algalita Educators Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins just wrapped up a 3 month education tour of the west coast of the U.S. They cycled down the coast stopping along the way to pass out education samples to educators, legislators, and community.

Interesting trash find of the day: a Japanese honey bear bottle and ½ a trash can lid. Wildlife citing of the day: a close encounter with a Black Foot Albatross. And by close, I mean close. We stopped for a swim in the late afternoon. While netting and documenting debris with cameras and video equipment, we managed to spark the curiosity of part of our albatross fan club (they are still following the Alguita). She landed right next to us and proceeded to ham it up for the camera. She was tagged, however she didn’t sit still quite long enough for us to get the information off of her band.

Early evening sent Jeff up the mast to finish the halyard repair process. Thankfully, he made it up and down the mast without any event to speak of. Our day ended with the accomplishment of what we had set out to do much earlier in the morning-raise the spinnaker.

We are making headway, although not much, toward our goal sampling zone. From the amount of debris we are bringing on board, it seems as though we are in the thick of the plastic soup at the moment. Every survey over the water surface unveils the presence of some sort of debris-small fragment or otherwise. At this point we have logged over 110 larger pieces of debris, and have yet to bring in one Manta trawl that was free of plastic. The past several trawls have been especially disturbing, blanketed with a layer of floating plastic particles.

From the thick of it,
Nicole

RESPONSE TO COMMENTS

Hi Jamie,
We have quite a bit of space to stow debris. Joel, Drew, Jeff, and the Captain rigged a cargo net onto the salon roof from one of the several ghost nets we picked up . We’ve stuffed the cargo net with the smaller debris we have collected (plastic bottles, buoys, bucket lids and such). The fragmented bits are being stored in bags, labeled with the collection date. There is plenty of deck space and material to rig debris storage. So until we run out of creative ways to stow it, we will keep bring the debris on board. (Check out the picture above!)

Day 26

2009-07-07T08:07:00.001-07:00

Noon Position: 33 33.60N, 167 01.67W

July, 6th 2009
Not much to report about today. We were making great headway this morning with the spinnaker up, 10 knots or so. In order to keep the spinnaker flying, we would have had to continue heading due north-which was not conducive to reaching our sample area. So, we took down the kite and put up the main and Genoa. During the sail change we discovered that the spinnaker halyard had chaffed all the way through the sheath and down into the core a bit. Captain and Jeff spent a couple hours making an eye splice for the shakel that attaches to the head of the sail. The spare spinnaker halyard will be used in future when we are on a beam reach as its pulley doesn’t come from inside the mast and chafe the halyard when pulled to the side.

We gained some vessel groupies today, 2 to 3 Black-Footed Albatross and a Laysan who dropped by a few times. They’ve been swooping and gliding around the Alguita all day, teasing Drew by flying out of sight we he decided to bring his camera out on deck. The “Albies”, as we’ve taken to calling them, were still around as the sun was setting this evening. You can see the wing of the albatros barely skimming the water in the photo.

The Captain and crew are all doing well. Jeff and Joel are neck and neck in a never-ending chess tournament. Drew found a large green glass Japanese fishing float, as I mentioned yesterday, and is now close to being on cloud nine. We just need to get him on a few more dives so he can breathe some “compressed air” as he likes to say.

The seas are starting to get a little rougher, no more glassy, sea state 1 conditions. This makes it more difficult to spot debris (swells and whitecaps get in the way) but way more interesting to maneuver around the boat. It’s almost like a dance-trying to stay balanced while getting from place to place.

It’s been raining on and off today as we’ve passed in and out of squalls. It’s the first day we’ve seen in quite a while without constant sunshine. We are 596 miles from our sample area and should reach it by the 10th, giving us plenty of time to sample before we need to return to Honolulu.

2009-07-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

We are back in Vallela territory again. As we headed further south on part 1 of the trip, we stopped seeing the little guys blanketing the ocean surface. We saw a pod of common dolphins yesterday, playfully swimming off the port bow of the the Alguita. The sun was just beginning to set, which created quite the picturesque moment. The moon is pretty close to full now and we've taken to watching the path of luminescence it creates on the calm ocean surface. We are roughly 650miles from our destination of 35n and 180W, and cruising along at a speed of 7knots with our friend, the new and improved Spinnaker, flying off the starboard bow. The southerly winds finally found us!

Some unwelcome and unexpected guests had stowed away and finally surfaced yesterday....maggots. Chrisitana opend the fridge and was soon overcome by her well known gag reflex (she can disect fish no problem, but put some maggots or some rotten food in front of her and she's done for!). The little guys started jumping ship--out of the fridge and into the crevices of the carpet. Somehow, the two of us who were most put off by the little critters ended up with the task of getting the maggot situation under control...

Now let's talk trash. The weekend was jam-packed with chasing down and wrangling debris and dissecting fish, constantly reminding us of the burden mankind has put on this vast and precious ecosystem. People argue that a handful of plastic surfacing out of 1 manta trawl is no big deal. I wonder if these people understand the vastness of the ocean. We've managed to infect, if you will, the largest and most remote part of the world. As I am writing now I watched a small banana float zip past the vessel. Our waste has metastasized, no longer a problem infecting just our immediate surroundings and filling up landfills (which is bad enough) but the debris is now in the circulatory system of our planet. Would you argue that it's "just a handful of cancer cells" permeating your body?
-Nicole-

Drew's account of 4th:

"we have been virtually becalmed all day…maybe 3 knot wind, so we have been motoring on course only diverting when debris warrants a temporary change of direction to go pick up whatever may be floating in the blue abyss. Believe me we had plenty of opportunities to change course.There was one 5 minute section where we found 4 plastic fishing floats along with numerous plastic bottles, rope and fragments. All in all today we scooped up 12 plastic floats and about 2 dozen other odd pieces of plastic debris. I can’t even begin to count how many pieces we did see but were too small for the pole nets and or too far out of reach off the boat. No matter how hard we tried, we just couldn’t pick up all the trash we see…it is impossible!

One of the other very critical elements to understanding this issue is the visual aspect. Many people want to see a picture…well that is almost impossible. Only at decks edge, 3 feet off the water can you see the small fragments drifting by, at a rate of 10pcs/minute, according to Nicole who measured that today, and that is only on one side of the boat, within visual range…30 ft maybe. Most of those fragments are too small to be caught with the hand nets.

Then when I went up to sit on the boom to get a higher vantage point for spotting bigger pieces, the first thing I noticed was, I could no longer see the small fragments, so if you are on the deck of 300 ft ship, you will not even see the real problem. I tried to film the small bits, but I don’t know how well it came out.

Our manta trawls today were the highest plastic concentration we have seen yet on this trip…and in my case the heaviest I have ever seen and we are still way outside of the center of the trash vortex. The pictures are from 2 ea. 2 hour trawls covering 1 meter wide by 6 miles long. The white, green, red, and light blue are plastic bits. The dark blue is jellies and the brown is assorted plankton organisms. From my perspective, this problem has expanded 100 times in the seven years since I first saw the plastic. What will I see next…"

Captain Moore's account

" Our voyage to the International Dateline to assess plastic debris levels is now in full swing. After 4 days of chasing non-existent tradewinds, we have finally found them up at 33 north lat, 165 west lon, and are sailing happily under our beautiful red and green spinnaker. The motoring was punctuated by two instances of prop fouling by ghostnets (lost or abandoned fishing gear) which had to be cut and unwound from the propellers - a difficult job, especially at night. The calm weather, while forcing us to use half our fuel supply, also afforded excellent sampling conditions for plastic trash. The crew was shocked by the amount floating by (which they often netted) and the amount pulled up by our manta trawl. On Independence Day alone, we recorded 34 large objects netted, including a dozen fishing floats, a hairbrush, a Japanese survey stake (definitely not from a ship), and a PET bottle of Mitsoya Cider. That does not include the many smaller bits we scooped up and didn’t record in our “collected debris log.” I can imagine young people on voyages in the not so distant past, when the ocean was teeming with life, excitedly netting up fish and other sea creatures in abundance. I see the same excitement in my young volunteer crew shouting and netting up debris in an ocean teeming with trash. Of course, our longest handled net can only reach out about ten feet from the boat, so we see many, many more pieces floating by than we can collect. In fact, Nicole did a stopwatch survey from the starboard bow and counted 217 pieces of plastic in 20 minutes or a little more than 10 pieces per minute. We are well and truly in the Subtropical Convergence Zone, as described by the NOAA Marine Debris Program, a band several hundred kilometers in width centered around 30 degrees north latitude, and stretching from far offshore California to far offshore Japan. One of our goals is to see how levels of plastic pollution fluctuate within this area. We have another species to add to our list of fish that have ingested plastic particles. I netted up a fishing float with a long tail of rope heavy with barnacles and a 9” Chub (nenue in Hawaiian) came up with the float. Chubs, genus Kyphosidae, have extremely long digestive tracts and “use bacterial fermentation to extract maximum nutrition from their diet of seaweed.” (Guide to Hawaiian Reef Fishes, by Hoover) Christiana was surprised to find on dissection, pelagic crabs in the stomach. Apparently, when you have to live off the ecosystem created by plastic debris, your vegetarian preferences may have to be compromised. In addition, she found two small plastic fragments along with the real food.

Drew spotted the first glass fishing float of the trip and we were able to grab it for his collection. He got a similar large green glass float on the 2002 gyre voyage." (See picture to the left of Jeff with the glass float)

Day 23

2009-07-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

Noon Position: 29 19.22N, 162 05.51W

We are heading north in search of winds, without much luck still. The nice thing about heading north-each day the sun seems to set a little later. Who can complain about more daylight?
This morning we deployed the 11th Manta trawl of the trip. This sample contained far more plastic than any of the past 10. We are deploying another trawl this evening in order to capture the mesopelagic fish which feed on the surface at night. We also are discussing doing early morning trawls (around 4 am or so) in order to catch these fish after they had fed. This may yield a more accurate plastic ingestion count, since we might be able catch the fish before they pass any plastic they ingested. In addition it would be interesting to see if there is a difference in the quantity of plastic pulled up after marine organisms have been feeding throughout the night.

The afternoon was spent watching for debris off the foredeck. Along with several fragments of plastic, we found a large polystyrene buoy, under which a school of Mahi Mahi had taken residence. After disturbing the shelter of the fish, they scattered frantically-right into one of the lines we had trailing behind the boat. Christiana worked up the fish and found a possible plastic particle in its stomach which has been preserved for on shore lab analysis. She also noticed that this female had completely hydrated gonads. This means she was ready to spawn, but the odd thing is that Mahi typically spawn in the springtime. She was the 11th Mahi we have caught so far (and we have still only pulled in one male!) She was also heaviest and the longest (jackpot!).

RESPONSE TO COMMENTS

Theresa,
We do have a rough running count of the larger pieces of debris we have collected so far-approximately 45 or so. We have spotted much more than this, but this was all we were able to get our hands on (much of the time, the debris is too far for us to net from the boat or we are in transit and cannot slow down or maneuver in time to catch it). And this is also including the plastic we have accumulated from the trawls-these are the tiny fragments which we will not be able to quantify and classify until we get them back to the lab. And not to worry-more will be heard from the resident fish nerd!

Day 22 Attack of the Ghost Net

2009-07-03T08:39:00.000-07:00

Noon position: 26.66N 161.34W

Before dawn this morning the vessel was attacked…by a ghost net. Judging from the color, level of fouling, and mesh size it seems that the net which lodged itself around our propellers this morning might be a piece of the same ghost net we caught yesterday afternoon (although we can’t say for sure). The force of the propeller rotating at 2400 revolutions per minute wound the net so tight around the drive shaft that it thrust the motor forward on its mounts one full inch and started a horrible grinding of metal on metal with the alternator hitting the belt guard. At first we thought the motor had thrown a rod, but Joel saw where the impact was and the Captain removed the belt guard and the motor ran OK in neutral, but stalled when put in gear. This is pretty much diagnostic for a wrap of debris around the propeller. Lucky for us, Drew and the Captain got lights and knives and were able (after an hour or so of sawing) to cut off the intruding net and its now residing on deck with the rest of our collected debris.

Many vessels are not so lucky though. It has been estimated that 6.6 billion Yen/yr (almost 70 million US dollars) is spent on damages to Japanese fishing vessels under 1000 gross tons because of marine debris related incidents(Takehama,1990). In 2005 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) found that marine debris caused 269 boating accidents and $3 million in property damage.

We are now motoring along (still) over the Pacific Seamounts, specifically Sibelius, Haydn, Ravel Seamounts which are named after famous musicians. We are now relaxing, watching a gorgeous Pacific sunset and waiting for cornbread to come out of the oven.

All the best from the Captain and crew.

--Nicole

Day 21-The Biggest Debris Day so Far

2009-07-02T12:27:00.000-07:00

Noon Coordinates 24 18.68 160 58.85

Surveying the ocean from the foredeck, Captain Moore called to me during my morning watch, “we are passing through a plankton bloom”, and sure enough I could see what was a planktonic version of the yellow brick road: a dense winding, river-like bloom of yellow-orange plankton drifting across the ocean surface(see photo above.) From his experience Captain knew that these dense windrows (long streaks on the ocean surface a few meters wide) are often tantamount to a dense oceanic stream of trash. Sure enough, he took a net to the bow and scooped up several pieces of debris within the first 20min or so. And so began our day of chasing debris through windrows.

After two hours of tracking and scooping debris from the deck, we decided it was high time to get into the water and observe the trash in situ. As we coasted into a particularly dense zone of the windrow and shut off the engines, we encountered our first ghost net (an abandoned fishing net which coalesces into a destructive mass that smothers marine life from coral reefs to the Hawaiian Monk seal).

We were able to get the net on deck after filming the marine life that decided to find shelter under this traveling debris mass. We found the all too typical ingredients of the plastic soup-bottles from cleaning and personal care products, buoys, fragments of plastic bags and hard plastics, and even a menacing hook from a long-line fishing operation which was tangled in the ghost net. It’s sobering to realize that the items are found with such regularity within the NPSG that I am able to describe them as “typical ingredients.”

Fouling organisms were abundant within the debris -crabs, barnacles, bryozans, and bristleworms. Of particular note was a crab with barnacles growing from its head (we are still not sure of the crab species we are finding, but we have seen them swimming separate from the debris). We also netted a juvenile and adult Frogfish (Sargasso Frogfish we believe), which was an unusual find for us.

The crew is all in good spirits and working in full gear to document the debris state of the Pacific. We are motoring along (winds are barely puffing at a sad 5 knotts or less).

Day 20- Back at sea!

2009-07-01T08:11:00.000-07:00

Noon Coordinates 21.66N 157.59

It’s our first full day back at sea since our pit stop at Kewalo Basin in Honolulu. The sail and the Manta trawl are fixed-up and ready for action. We were able to get the Manta repaired by the end of the day on Friday, but we had to stick around until Monday afternoon to wait for the spinnaker to be repaired. In the meantime we enjoyed our weekend milling about Oahu, playing in the surf, and taking care of random boat chores.

It was refreshing to see what a great job Oahu is doing to phase out single use plastic items! The fuel dock at Ala Wai Harbor provides only “potato-ware” and paper bags in their convenience store. The crew made our way up to the North Shore and found several local places in Halewia town (like Kono’s and the Coffee Gallery) using compostable versions of” disposable” utensils and cups and even sustainable to-go packaging made by forward thinking companies like Styrophobia. Many of the local business are part of a coalition of called Plastic Free Hale’wia and have vowed to keep one time use plastics out of their business practices. Even the extravagant Turtle Bay Resort jumped on the Styrophobia bandwagon!

While compostable bags and utensils are a HUGE step in the right directions, in order get the full potential out of these alternatives they need to be composted. Eventually a commercial composting facility will need to be introduced on the island to handle a large scale switch to compostables. I got the chance to speak with the founders of TR33s (a North Shore based sustainability consulting firm working with Joel’s environmental non-profit Sea of Change) who pointed out that until enough businesses carry compostable products it will not be profitable for a large scale composting facility to come to the island. And on the flipside, many businesses feel it is pointless to carry compostables if there is no facility to take care of the breakdown process. It’s a bit of a catch-22, but thankfully the switch is moving along.

We spent the day traveling north past Kuai and Ni’ihhau, making our way through the Kaulakahi Channel which runs between them. The Captain was hoping the winds would allow us to travel a north-west route running up the western border of the main Hawaiian Islands so we could sample along the chain in order to see if there was a progression in debris density along the islands. But once again the winds are proving to be a little too weak to fully power our sails in the direction we want to go, and we have been relying on the motor more than we hoped. So plans have changed and we are taking a route more directly for the time being. Our goal is still to make it out to the International Dateline, at about 28 or 29 degrees north, west of Kure Atoll to sample outside of the boundaries of Papahanaumokuākea Marine National Monument.

We deployed the manta tonight test out the repairs and just completed two hour evening trawl-producing a plastic film fragment, numerous shapes and sizes of small hard plastic fragments, and several different species of fish (a total of 64 fish)! Click on the picture of the sample to the left to look closely through the contents.

On another note, congratulations to Joel and SCUBADrew who have received a grant from Hawaii Community Foundation to present the results of the voyage to Kahuku High School on Oahu. In addition to sharing our research they will teach the students to monitor the beaches around Kahuku point for marine debris. Kahuku beaches are the most heavily plagued by marine debris wash-up on the island.

Aloha from the CApt. and crew!

Day 15

2009-06-26T12:45:00.001-07:00

Day 15 6/25/09

We are about 65miles from Oahu, and will be pulling into the fuel dock Ala Wai Habor and then we will dock at Kewalo Basin. The night watch team is geared up to be extra attentive as we approach the thick boat traffic surrounding the islands.

We caught our first male Mahi today, making that Mahi number 10 of the trip. We found 2 puffer fish in its stomach, and no plastic upon initial analyses.

We had a 7^th crewmember for the last half of the day…a stubborn and economical Booby. He(or she) decided to not fly back to Hawai’i, but to catch a ride aboard the Alguita. He positioned himself atop the gantry for a while preening and scoping for flying fish. After a few hours, the back deck became soiled with Booby droppings and Jeff decided it was time to encourage the bird to fly off. And it did…to the bow of the boat where he stood his ground for another ½ hour or so. After some more encouragement to get on his way, he flew up and perched atop the boom and proceeded to soil the mainsail.

Our time in Honolulu will be monopolized with the many errands we need to handle, so you’ll hear from us again on Monday or so when the whirlwind of tasks (and some decompresson time) is over.

Family and friends, we are back in cell phone range so give us a call! Aloha from the Islands, Nicole

Tamara, Thanks for passing on the stuff from Sarah and congrats on the award! We’ll do what we can to get you some plastic/seawater samples for you!!

Day 14

2009-06-25T12:34:00.000-07:00

Noon Position 22.68N 153.06W

Day 14 began with sunshine, a sail change, and a blue water expedition. After breakfast, the crew rallied to take down the sails in preparation for a blue water expedition. Here is the Captain’s account of the morning:

“This morning, the trades fell to under 15 knots, and we broke with the routine to make a sail change. Since the mainsail, Genoa Jib and Stays'l all had to come down before putting up the Spinnaker, I like to use the opportunity of becoming dead in the water with no sails up to deploy our sea anchor and practice our blue water diving technique so that we will be ready when we get to the heavy debris accumulation zone north of the islands. This was the first dive in the outer waters of the Gyre for "Scuba Drew" Wheeler, a veteran of our 2002 Gyre voyage. As we were tanking up for our dive, I saw a dish soap bottle astern that had been afloat for some time. I jumped in with mask and snorkel and saw that birds had pecked a few quarter size holes in this bottle, the shape of your smaller Joy or Dawn bottle, and inside was a condominium for a colony of sea life, including crabs and fish. After filming this, a larger school of fish around a black plastic bag's tangled remains, and retrieving a handful of miscellaneous ropes and line balls and other plastic fragments floating by, Drew remarked that this collection of trash in a few minutes was as bad as it was in the center of the accumulation zone 7 years earlier on his 2002 trip, an area over 600 miles to the north of our current position. We are regularly reminded of the speed at which the plastic pollution of our ocean is increasing.”

The concentration of debris we found subsurface really was astounding. The open ocean is a diffusely populated area. You can swim along for a significant amount of time without encountering life. It was troubling to find that I was encountering life and debris (and this is just the large, easily visible debris, not counting the plastic fragments we collect during trawls) at essentially the same rate. We collected 10 separate pieces of debris in less than an hour…and as Capt. Moore state above, we aren’t even in the concentration zone.

“Although the official accumulation zone of the North Pacific shown on NOAA maps is rather long and narrow, the debris there has to "accumulate" from somewhere, and that somewhere is everywhere else. More and more stuff is out here, everywhere we look, every time we are underwater. What will eventually happen to all this seaborne plastic waste? We know it is constantly becoming more brittle and breaking into smaller pieces. Will it, in this way, eventually all be eaten by some sea creature? Increasingly, my answer is tending toward "yes, all of it will be eaten.”

After our dive, we catalogued and preserved the debris and accompanying fouling organisms as necessary and enjoyed a lunch of tomato soup and grilled cheese before we set out to bring in the sea anchor and raise the spinnaker. Thankfully the “emotional sail” was hoisted and set without issue (at that point anyway…), and we were left with a free afternoon during which Mahi number 8 (a female) was caught and dissected around 6pm. Of course, tissue samples were saved for POPs analysis. Right as dinner was being served Mahi number 9 bit the hook. This was the first gravid female we’ve encountered so far. Once again a female, which got the crew thinking about all the research that’s being done on the feminization of fish as a result of toxins that can be found accumulated on plastics, since all the Mahi we’ve caught so far have been female.

The end of the evening brought a bit of catastrophe, although no one was hurt and the situation was handled well. The spinnaker was flying peacefully, we suddenly she started flapping around like mad. The Captain called out that we lost the port tack (a line running from the bottom, edge of the sail). After some hustle to bring in the sail, we realized the eye of the sail (the reinforced hole through which the line attaches) was ripped right off. From what we can tell, it was just a case of standard wear and tear, and should be easily fixed by a professional sailmaker.

We are 220 miles out from Honolulu! We are all excited to get a chance to decompress on land for a bit, although there are quite a few tasks to handle during our short stay. For one, we need to get the Manta trawl welded and in working condition for our next round of sampling. And after this evening we have a spinnaker to repair as well…

A big aloha from the Capt. and crew at the cutting edge of marine debris research,
Nicole

RESPONSE TO COMMENTS

Tamara,
Good to hear from you! Hope all is well on the East Coast. The only plastics we are intending to collect for POPs analysis are those from within the gut of a fish. There are two scenarios here: 1) Christiana dissects the stomach and searches for plastic immediately after we catch the fish. If plastic is found, then it is labeled and frozen along with the liver and muscle tissue (in a separate vial). Situation 2) The entire stomach is saved for later content analysis. Christiana has been using this protocol when the stomach is too full, or otherwise unfit, to be analyzed in the field. In this case, any plastic present would be frozen in situ, inside the stomach.
The other plastic we are collecting, via manta trawl is fixed in formalin and those collected by individuals via net or hand are only fixed in part (we are saving portions with accompanying fouling organisms for a doctoral student at SCRIPPS). The rest of the individually collected samples are just being stored in a container on the foredeck. Captain Moore said he would be more than happy to work with Sarah if she wants some plastic for POPs analysis. How much, which size class, etc… Let us know and we will freeze what we can for her.
Take care!
Nicole

Day 13- More Mahi

2009-06-24T07:21:00.000-07:00

July 23, 2009 Noon Coordinates 23.098N and 150.329W

Our resident Ichthyologist, Christiana Boerger’s, account of the day:

Today we hooked 3 Mahi Mahi! This puts our total fish catch up to 7. Mahi Mahi (Coryphaena hippurus) are also referred to as Dorado or Dolphinfish. They put up a great fight when you reel them in, actually jumping out of the water. Before we filet the fish, I dissect them to look for plastic in their stomach and save samples of tissue to analyze for POPs (persistent organic pollutants) later in the lab.

The dissections were particularly interesting today! I go through some simple steps to get the samples I need. First, I record the time and location of where the fish were caught. Then I take some simple measurements, standard length (the length from the tip of the closed mouth to the end of the caudal peduncle) and weight. Mahi are sexually dimorphic, which means you are able to tell the difference between male and female just by looking at them, without cutting them open to look at their gonads (sexual organs) like most bony fish. Males have a blunt, squarish head, while the females have a more feminine, roundish head. So far all of the fish we have caught have been females.

Next comes the fun part for me, opening them up! I carefully take scissors and cut from their natural opening (anus) to the bone located in between the pelvic fins. I poke around a bit and then carefully cut out the liver and place in on a piece of tin foil which will be frozen until it can be looked at back at a lab for toxin analysis. I check out the gonads to reconfirm the sex of the fish. None of them have had developed eggs yet. Next I remove the stomach. I make a cut at the top of the esophagus and completely take it out of the fish. I make another cut to open up the stomach completely to take a look around. The last thing I do is take a muscle tissue sample of each of the fish, which is frozen along with the liver.

No plastic in the stomachs today, however, in the first Mahi, there were 3 whole fish in its stomach. I identified them to be some sort of puffer fish, and Drew’s best guess was that they were Striped Bellied Puffers. You could still feel the spikes on the skin and see their very distinct mouth. Because the digestion process had already begun in the first fish, the insides of the pufferfish were not identifiable. The second Mahi had a less digested pufferfish. I was actually able to pull out the stomach of this pufferfish and found its last meal to be crustaceans (probably crabs, due to the high amount of exoskeletons found). I found some more bones in Mahi #2’s stomach, which I identified to be from a flying fish, due to its super long pectoral fins. The third Mahi had an empty stomach, except for a couple different types of parasites which were still moving around.

We have caught some small flying fish in some of our trawling nets and I am very interested to see if I will find any plastic in their stomach’s, seeing as I now know they are a part of the Mahi’s diet. So exciting from a research perspective!! Needless to say, we’ve got Mahi for days, and Joel has made some Mahi jerky (which is tied up on the stern and should be ready in a couple days), Jeff made some Mahi poke, (a mixture of raw fish, cabage, ginger, onions, chilli, and lemon juice), and the Captain is also preparing us dinner tonight of what else, but Mahi sushi rolls and sashimi!!

I’m hoping we catch even more fish tomorrow, especially since we are getting closer to the islands and I look forward to seeing what other species we will catch. The weather has been beautiful today and we should hopefully be in Honolulu sometime Thursday night or Friday morning. Thanks to all my friends and family reading the blog and sending emails! I miss you all so much!

The Alguita Fish Nerd,
Christiana

Day 12- Plastic in a mahi mahi

2009-06-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Day 12 June 22, 2009 Noon position 23.765N 147.444

Last night the late hours of the sampling marathon brought along some chaos. It all started with a lost cod end (the end piece of the net on the Manta trawl, where the debris and plankton are collected) and escalated from there…

To start with, conditions were a little rough. We were operating three different sampling devices (the Manta, the Bongo nets, and the small square net) with a sea state 5/6…..at night. Although the conditions were less than ideal, we all shared the Captain’s sentiments…..”if we’re not willing to do this, then who will?” We are outside of the area that any government entity is obligated to care about. So we pushed away the urge to sleep and plowed on with the sampling.

At 8:20pm, we pulled in the Manta trawl only to find that the whole two hours of sampling was fruitless. The sea freed the cod end of the net, and took our data along with it. No doubt a small disappointment, but we moved right along, put another cod end on and put the trawl back out. We pulled in the next trawl at about 10:30pm. This one produced several small fish, including Myctophids, a couple flying fish, and a saury, which was exactly what we were looking for-fish to analyze for plastic ingestion.

We had a system set up, Christiana and I processed the samples (removed them from the net, labeled them, and fixed them in formalin) while the Captain, Drew, Jeff, and Joel retrieved and deployed the sampling devices. As the Manta was being redeployed from its 10:30 retrieval, Christiana and I heard some commotion among the deployment team and the phrase “…the wing is broken!” At that point there was a mad scramble to bring in the Manta. One of the control lines was rendered useless and the guys had to get creative with boat hooks in order to save the wounded Manta trawl. Once on deck the extent of the damage was visible; one wing snapped and the other one was a bit warped as well. One of the attachment hooks for the line broke off as well, but perhaps most significantly the j-bar holding the satellite was warped from the unbalanced force of the Manta trawl. At this point we were all wondering how things went so wrong, and how we were going to keep sampling. We were right in the thick of the plankton accumulation zone testing in for the hypothesized concentration of debris…it would be a shame to let this opportunity pass.

As it turned out, several factors had compounded in the failure of the Manta trawl. First off, our spotlight decided to die mid-deployment. As the battery was being switched out, the crew was unable to evaluate the deployment of the trawl, which requires a balance of tension between two lines. Hopefully repairs can be made once we arrive in Hawai'i.

Bottom line, everyone was okay. We decided to improvise, using the small square net as a surface trawl, which we found out was torn from its frame during its last run. After some repairs, the net was deployed and for the rest of the late night/early morning sampling the crew was split into shifts: the Captain, Jeff, and myself and Christiana, Joel, and Drew.

The square net does not perform anywhere near as well as the Manta. So this morning brought a new trawling design. We kept the Bongo nets at the surface to imitate the Manta.

Chrisitana and Jeff each reeled in a mahi mahi today, one right after the other. The fish served a double purpose, science and sustenance. Before we filleted the fish, Christiana took muscle and liver samples of each of the fish and looked in their stomachs. Fish number 3, the mahi mahi that Jeff reeled in, contained what the Captain confirmed via microscope as none other than a piece of plastic film. This now makes 8 species of fish in which we have identified with plastic in their gut.

The last set of trawls came in at 5pm. Overall we were able to run 11 Bongo trawls (3 of which imitated the Manta), 6 regular Manta trawls, and 6 trawls with the small square net. It was a productive, though hectic, sampling marathon. Although the samples have yet to be thoroughly analyzed, we were able to spot differing densities of plastic within and outside of the boundaries of the plankton (and possibly debris) accumulation zone. At the end of a long stint of sampling and a significant find of plastic in a common food fish, the Captain prepared one of his specialties chili rellenos accompanied by rice, beans, fresh guacamole, and fresh salsa. It was a perfect end to a productive day. We are now en route to Hawai’I with aboiut 400 miles to go.

Stay tuned for more updates and be sure to check out the Scientific American website in the “60 second science blog”, where Drew ‘s weekly account of our voyage is posted.

Day 10 and 11-An Encounter of the Albatross Kind and Bi-hourly Sampling

2009-06-22T14:29:00.000-07:00

Noon coordinates (Day 11) 24 .65 N and 146.30W

Saturday, Day 10 began with a sail change. We had been making fantastic speed with the spinnaker, a steady 10 knots with the occasional burst up to 13 or 14. But the higher the wind speed climbed the harrier it became to keep the spinnaker up. On top of the danger associated with flying the spinnaker in high winds, the speed we were making would have put us in our sample area at some sort ungodly predawn hour. So we took down the spinni (which was a pretty intense situation, you have to grab the sail like crazy to keep it from falling overboard and getting stuck in the prop) and raised the main and the stays’l, which slowed us down to 7 knots or so.

Midday presented several of us with the opportunity sit up on the foredeck and catch some rays. In between flipping pages we’d take in the sights of the gyre, sometimes Albatross and flying fish, other times flotsam such as lotion bottles (see pic above).

Many of our days have had food themes, arising from the need to use up the fresh food before it turns. As it goes, one certain vegetable decides to turn all at once. A few days back, it was day of the beets. We had more boiled and still have more pickled beets than you can imagine. Then we had day of the tomatoes, which included decided to stuff and baking the tomatoes with cheese, parsley, onion, and garlic. And Saturday proved to be day of the carrot. Our carrot supply was threatening to make a mass exodus from the world of edible food, so we tried to use them all up. The Captain whipped up a lovely pineapple carrot salad and the rest of the carrots were steamed and topped of with some cumin and garlic salt.

Saturday afternoon brought an unexpected encounter with a Black-footed Albatross. We on the back deck watching the lovely bird catch puffs of air and soar around us. Billy, as we named her, landed in the water and as an afterthought Christiana mentioned how terrible it would be if the Billy were to get caught in one of the fishing lines dragging from the stern of the boat, and much to our dismay a split second later, she did. Here’s ScubaDrew’s account of the bizarre event:

“We did have a bit of craziness on deck today, when we accidentally snagged an Albatross with one of our trolling fishing lures. I was filming the graceful bird swooping over the waves when it landed right in the path of one of our fishing rigs. Well, before we knew it the poor bird was snagged and being dragged across the ocean, unable to regain control.
With some quick thinking, we reeled the bird up to the boat where Joel took control of this very awkward animal. He has spent time in the Northwest Hawaiian Islands so he has had experience in handling Albatross. The good news is the line was the only thing snagging the wing--not the hook. So with a freed wing and some feathers in need of a little primping, we let her go back onto the big blue and watched as she stretched her wings out and prepared for flight a flight back home…only 1000 miles away. Amazing birds they are…fly thousands of miles to feed in the open ocean.”

Our encounter with Billy was a harsh reminder for us all; we leave our footprint where ever we go. It is important for us to be acutely aware of our actions to keep from inadvertently harming earth’s flora and fauna.

Today, with roughly 1900 miles under our belt, we reached the outskirts of the accumulation zone we’ve been aiming for. The early morning was spent fine tuning the Bongo nets and Manta trawl for 24 straight hours of sampling over a 80 nautical mile transect. Why the continuous sampling? Well Dr. Nikolai Maximenko, with the School of Ocean and Earth Science Technology (SOEST) in Hawai’i is interested in meso-scale variations across this predicted accumulation zone. Basically, he wants to see if a debris gradient can be established from the boundary to the actual accumulation zone. So, as I mentioned before we are sampling, within, and outside the boundaries. We are running trawls for 2 hours, collecting the samples, and then redeploying them.

By 10am all hands were on deck and the sampling marathon began. It’s going to be a long, yet fruitfull night. With a sea state ranging from 5-6 on the Beaufort scale, conditions have not been ideal for sampling, but we are working through it. The swells are the largest we’ve seen all trip. They are awe inducing, especially when they are positioned to crash right over the deck.

Coming from a first timer to the gyre, the samples we collect are truly astounding. In one regard it is amazing to have the opportunity to get up close and personal with planktonic organisms we catch while trawling. Today we caught several Portuguese Man- of -Wars, which are mesmerizing little critters. On the flip side, it is disturbing to watch chunks of debris spill out of the nets. It is bizarre and unsettling to find the detritus of our haphazard consumer lifestyle in one of the most remote parts of the world.

From the cutting edge of marine debris research,
Nicole

Day 9

2009-06-20T08:53:00.000-07:00

Today's noon position: 24.13N 139.18W
Friday 19, 2009

Day 9. Yet another day in transit, which means that we haven’t been able to sample. We are making a beeline for the suspected accumulation zone (see image), and we can’t afford to spare the time it would take us to sample en route. Sampling while underway requires slowing the boat down to a speed in the range of 1.5-3 knots, and if we want to have the time to accomplish all of our research goals we can’t afford to travel at those low speeds.

Developments on the route front--at this point we have decided to extend this leg of the voyage in order to accommodate our original sampling goals at 35N along the International Dateline. The crew has decided we are all willing to do what it takes and spend a bit of extra time in order to gather the data we originally set out for.

Days in transit can seem a little slow, but they also provide time to take care of some of the other important stuff (like route finding and sampling protocol for the potential accumulation zone we will be investigating). Capt. Moore spent part of the day working out those details for the study site, for which our ETA is Sunday. He has decided to sample on a transect through this zone, making sure to trawl within the zone and on the outskirts of the zone, both before we enter it and after we exit it. We will also deploy the sea anchor at some point within the potential accumulation zone to allow us to survey the area while diving.

These travel days also provide us with ample time to decompress between watches. Several of us are set up on a semi-regular workout routine (including jump roping, hula hooping, mat exercises and yoga-all of which are exponentially more difficult while underway!) We’ve also have had plenty of time to catch up on reading in the past couple of days. The Alguita has quite the cornucopia of reading material on board-everything from Vonnegut to Jared Diamond to scientific peer-reviewed papers to cheesey surf romance novels . Keeping with the spirit of the ocean, some of the books about epic maritime sagas are getting passed around, like “Fastnet Force 10” which Drew plowed through in one day. Joel and Jeff have been glued to the chess board, and we have all been working a bit in the kitchen to try and use up all of the fresh produce that is turning. We recently decided to utilize the espresso maker, which has been a treat for those of us with an early watch.

Today’s wildlife citing: a juvenile flying fish has made its way on deck, and that’s about it. Other than a minor electrical issue with our generator, there are no problems to report. Just smooth sailing and a happy (although more than ready for some sampling action) crew.
From the PAcific, Nicole Chatterson, Vessel Blogger

REPLIES TO COMMENTS

Congratulations Marcus and Anna on both your wedding and the near completion of your epic education ride from Canada to Mexico along the Pacific Coast. Your efforts to bring Algalita's startling findings to the public regarding plastic pollution in the ocean are without precedent. The JUNKride's ultra low carbon "tire prints" embody the ideals of the entire environmental movement. You've set a steller example for everyone and shown that combining work with zero carbon emissions is possible; not only possible but fun. Tha Captain and crew of ORV Alguita salute you as we sail along with our zero carbon "hull prints" through the great North Pacifuc Subtropical Gyre

Day 7 and 8

2009-06-19T08:14:00.000-07:00

Noon Coordinates 24.026N 135.952W

Flying kites, flying squid, flying fish, and a pirate ship (well not really)… We’ve been sailing downwind with the spinnaker (or in sailing terms, flying the kite) for the past two days. Downwind sailing is wonderfully calm (even in 20 knot winds) and the spinnaker is a mesmerizing sail to watch as it billows in the wind. It really is like a giant kite.

We raised the spinnaker on Wednesday morning. Captain warned us that it is often called “the emotional sail” because it’s a fairly involved sail to raise, which can lead to a bit of crew tension. However, with all hands on deck and clear direction from the Captain it went up smoothly. Since it’s is such a tricky sail to maintain (It takes a lot of tweaking to keep the sail happy), we’ve switched back to paired watches.

On Wednesday morning we had a couple visitors on board the ship. Two flying squids made their way on deck. In the afternoon Christiana dissected them to see if they had eaten any plastic. The little guys were plastic free.

Today while reading on deck, several of the crew spotted flying fish. The vast expanse of water is no doubt a beautiful setting, but it really makes any sign of life especially exciting. After the flying fish sighting, the boat was full of excitement when a blurb popped up on the radar. The blurb turned out to be a large, rusty and fairly shabby looking vessel passing right through our course. It was great to see a sign of human life other than ourselves, but also a little strange to imagine that two vessels can come so close to each other in such a vast expanse of ocean. Of course our active imaginations let us entertain the idea that our fellow mariners were pirates,... Alas the boat fell off our radar without any crazy pirate antics.

We are still on course to the destination provided to us by NOAA as a possible accumulation zone. We are roughly 540nM away and the ETA is three days. We are all excited to see what this area has to offer us in terms of better understanding how marine debris accumulated within the North Pacific Gyre.

We are all in good spirits. The Captain and crew send our love and hellos to everyone back home. Thanks for following the blog and keep the comments coming!

Day 7!

2009-06-16T22:38:00.001-07:00

Noon position: 23 36.24'N 130 19.79'W

Hello from the Capt. and crew!

Day 5 and we are still headed for Hawai’I, but have added a slight detour to the northwest of our route. Dave Foley, an oceanographer with NOAA, has predicted an accumulation zone not too far out of our way and we are headed there to investigate. You may be wondering, “where is he getting the idea that marine debris might be accumulating in this area?” Well, Dave has put together the Debris Estimation Likelihood Index (DELI) based off of chlorophyll levels. Essentially high levels of chlorophyll correlate to high levels of plankton. Plankton rides the ocean currents, as does marine debris. So it is hypothesized that where the currents have caused an accumulation of plankton, there might also be an accumulation of debris.

We deployed the third Manta trawl of the trip this afternoon. The trawl produced lots of juvenile sawrys, some more of the purple gastropods which Capt. Moore has identified as Janthina janthina, and to our disgust, but not to our surprise, several plastic fragments and some plastic line.

After trawling we practiced how to heave-to, which is a way to set the sails that effectively stops the boat from moving forward. This is an important tool to have under our belt in the case of an emergency. Since we were already stopped from the heave-to drill, the Captain, Christiana, Drew and Jeff decided to take a dip in the ocean. Capt. Moore searched for trash while Drew captured underwater footage of the debris gathering. They pulled up a piece of a plastic shopping bag, a newspaper packing band, and some plastic fragments. This is what happens when throwaway consumerism meets the open ocean.

The winds are starting to pick up and the seas are beginning to get a little feistier. Some of us are reapplying our scopolamine patches, and others have sea legs (and stomachs) just as sturdy as ever. The day ended with a valuable lesson (at least for me): don’t leave the hatches open. As you can imagine, hatches and active seas don’t mix very well. I experienced this first hand today as a large wave swept over the deck and down the hatch located DIRECTLY above my head. Needless to say, I was jostled from my pre-watch nap with seawater to the face and left with a pile of wet sheets.

We are cruising along at a speed of 9.0knotts and climbing; the fastest we’ve seen yet…and we are achieving it without the help of our engines!

Day 6- First manta trawl!

2009-06-15T22:58:00.001-07:00

noon position: 24.878N and 128.166W

It’s Day five and we are officially 2/5 of the way to Hawai’i. Day five has been a day of firsts-- the first plastic trawl of the trip, our first fish catch (a Mahi Mahi!) and the first day of seriously tending to the “vessel garden” (aka sifting through the funky produce).

Let’s start with the trawls. While the winds have been against us in terms of maintaining our original course, they have put us in an area of the Pacific which had never been sampled……until today! See the map below or Click here, to view more maps of our previous sampling areas. We deployed the first Manta trawl, a device that captures surface debris in a fine mesh net, at 9am. This process was akin to riding a bike for the Captain and veteran crew Drew, Joel and Jeff, and a learning experience for the newbies (Christiana and myself).

After an hour of towing the trawl we pulled it in to find a strikingly low amount of plastic. Among the plastic identified was some line, a few hard plastic fragments, and a piece of a clear plastic label on which we could decipher the letter “d”. Among the life identified in the sample was a button valella, some copepods, a juvenile Pacific saury, and tiny gastropods with gorgeous purple shells. (See image of sample at top.)

The evening brought on trawl number two. This trawl gave us the opportunity to experiment with a tethered underwater camera, which Joel was able to rig to record the underwater flow into the Manta trawl. This was a significant in that it confirmed the integrity of our surface sampling methods. We ran the evening trawl for an hour as well, finding results similar to the morning trawl--very little plastic.

Obviously the low quantity of plastic present in samples is good news, but it does highlight a key point. Throughout fifteen years of sampling, we have yet to bring in a trawl completely void of plastic. While standing on the foredeck today, the Captain was able to identify plastic fragments flowing past the vessel. We also spotted some larger debris, a 5 gallon bucket which managed to evade our collection efforts. The point is, even in this new sample area in which our trawls our producing comparatively low amounts of plastic-there is still enough debris present for us to visually register and in our trawls. The relatively low amount of plastic also points to the possible delineation of the boundaries of an accumulation zone, although it is far too early in the data collection process to make any definitive conclusions. Joel noted that during the JUNKraft expedition last summer he and Marcus Eriksen noted a similar trend in abrupt transitions in plastic accumulation as they skirted the south edge of the accumulation area.

On to the adventures in gardening. In between trawls, the day was spent sifting through crates full of greens. To avoid wasting limited food we look for the food about to spoil and eat it first. The parsley was getting ready to turn, so we whipped up tabouli salad (using quinoa instead of bulgur wheat). We also found our beets nearing the tipping point, so the evening has been spent boiling and prepping the beets for pickling or easy snacking. Our greens are on the fritz as well….looks like we’re in for several days of green salad.

And finally, after five days of rigging fishing poles and hand lines, we had our first catch. Christiana kept the liver and other organs and tissue for future analysis.

The wind is starting to cooperate and blow more towards the west. We have taken down the stays’l which is used to sail close to the wind and put up the genoa which is flown when the wind is more a beam. We now are able to make good on a course of 245 degrees to our sampling area south of the Big Island of Hawai’i. Every mile sailed is a mile closer to Hawai’i. If our luck continues the wind will build and tomorrow we will fly the spinnaker!

Best wishes from the Capt. and Crew

Day 5

2009-06-14T23:13:00.001-07:00

Noon Position: 27 29.3N 127 00.2W or 27.488N and 127.003W

Today is day 5 at sea, all is well and the crew is in great spirits. Now that the all of the crew is up to speed with watch duties, we have switched to 2 hour, single watches. This is a lot easier on our sleep schedules.

There is however news to report regarding our travel plans. Due to a large and persistent high pressure system, we have to rethink our original route, which would have deposited us along the International Dateline (180W) at latitude of about 35N. Because of the high pressure system we are dealing with light winds, which is not optimal for sailing. The weather has forced us to spend most of our time underway motor sailing. We have already used roughly 200 gallons of the 700 gallons we started with? If we keep up at this rate we will exhaust our fuel supply. At this point we are forced to bend to the will of nature and follow the winds.

As is required when dealing with the seas, the Captain has a backup plan. Our new route and sampling strategy will take us to a more southerly location than planned, but will still present us with ample research opportunities. The new plan is to continue our heading south in order to catch the easterly trade winds. This route will bring us to Hawai’i and allow us to survey a debris convergence zone located off the southern tip of the Big Island. This convergence zone is thought to be responsible for the accumulation of debris on beaches such as Kamilo. After sampling this convergence zone, we can refuel and head up the island chain toward the International Dateline at a lower latitude than planned. How far we will actually get is to be determined by the amount of time it takes us to get to Hawai’i in the light winds we have been experiencing since we left.

Speaking of debris sampling, today’s debris catch was a 300mm buoy fouled with barnacles and pelagic crabs (See photo to left of Captain Moore with the buoy and the photo above of one of the crabs, any experts out there know the ID on this little guy?).

Keeping in tune with the rest of the weekend, the weather was phenomenal. Much of the day was spent out on deck stretching our limbs and taken in the scenery (which is mainly….water). Capt. Moore gave a presentation to an assembly of 14-18 year old students at Hawai’i Preparatory Academy. He was able to lead them through a power point presentation via satellite phone.

Our wildlife sighting for the day included a Red tailed Tropic Bird and some Petrels.

Day 4- first open ocean swim!

2009-06-13T21:03:00.001-07:00

Today the crew had the chance to stop for our first open ocean swim, roughly 500miles offshore! With thousands of miles of water around us and hundreds of meters of water below our feet, it was an astonishing experience. While in the water Drew got the opportunity to test out some of his underwater gear and Capt. swam around the boat with a net searching for plastic. He found four small bits (two pieces of line, a thin transparent fragment and a cloth like fragment).

Day 3

2009-06-12T21:32:00.000-07:00

Noon position: 29˚46min 38secs N and 121˚53min 27secs W

Greetings from the ORV Alguita! In the past 24hrs, we have had our first series of debris encounters. While taking in our fishing lines for the night, we dragged in our first piece of debris; a deflated green balloon with the string still attached. It was a little disheartening to discover that we were fishing for trash instead of fish.

Last night at around 10pm, we passed the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). For those of you who are wondering what that means, we are now officially out of the US waters, in what is essentially the no-man’s land of the Pacific. Because this area is out of US jurisdiction, it is not a top priority in terms of government funded research.

We were greeted in the morning with another debris sighting. We found a plastic water bottle (see photo above) which likely originated from Russia (the cap had Russian text). It had been afloat in the ocean just long enough for fouling organisms (i.e. tiny baby gooseneck barnacles) to latch on.

Our next trash sighting, roughly 300miles out to sea, was a tangle of fouled line and buoys. In addition to gooseneck barnacles making their home inside the floating mess, we found several pelagic crabs and a couple of different invertebrates. After weighing the mass of rubbish (9 kilos) we preserved a sample of the debris with the critters that we found living on it for Miriam Goldstein, a doctoral candidate at SCRIPPS, who is studying the fouling organisms that live on pelagic trash. The last two pieces of trash found today were a Monarch brand garlic-salt container and a plastic napkin or towel floating on the surface. These finds are indicators that we are making our way into the heart of trash accumulation.

As far as wildlife sightings go, we had a pod of Common Dolphins passing us on portside. We also spotted several Velella velella, also known as the By-the-wind sailors, which is an awesome little sea creature that has a small oval sail so it can use the winds to travel the seas.
Best Wishes from the Captain and crew

Cheers,
Nicole

Day One!

2009-06-11T20:20:00.001-07:00

Hi everyone,

Thanks to the family, friends and fellow ocean enthusiasts who made it to the Alguita send off yesterday! It was the perfect way to begin our 6 week journey!

Today is our first full day at sea and the crew is still getting used to the swing of things. We are running on paired 4 hours watches. Only one case of sea-sickness so far and we’ve spotted some awesome wildlife! This morning the crew saw four Fin Whales roughly 100 yards of the starboard stern of the vessel, and one more whale who was a little too far from the boat for us to identify high spout.

Lucky for us, we had some great grocery shoppers for the Alguita-it’s full any kind of food you can imagine! Last night the crew had stuffed mushroom and a fresh green salad. This morning we woke up to a homegrown boysenberry cobbler cooking in the oven. As many of you saw at the send-off, the deck is full of delicious fresh produce; we have everything from kale to chocolate persimmons to snack on.

We are motor sailing for the time being, and cruising at an average speed of about 8.0knots, using our precious fuel to leave the calm and enter into the northerly winds.

-Nicole-
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Bon Voyage ORV Alguita!

2009-06-10T22:10:00.000-07:00

ORV Alguita has just departed on the first voyage of the 2009 Pacific Gyre Expedition!

Preparing for the 2009 Gyre Expedition

2009-06-03T14:46:00.000-07:00

The ORV Alguita crew is busy preparing for the 2009 Gyre Expedition to study plastic marine debris in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre this summer. The departure date is currently set for June 10- let us know if you would like to attend the informal send-off party in Long Beach California. (vesselsupport@algalita.org for more information)

Quick Background- Pacific Gyre Expedition 2009 Voyage #1
The quantity of plastic pollution in the ocean is increasing rapidly, paralleling the rapid rise in global plastic production. Each time the ORV Alguita crew collects samples from the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, we find that the abundance of plastic has increased since our previous visit. In previous research voyages we have found a very high abundance of plastic in the area of the gyre that has come to be known as "The Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch", but we suspect that the contamination is much more widespread. This summer we will have the opportunity to test this hypothesis during the first voyage of our four month research expedition. During this voyage the ORV Alguita research crew will be at sea for over six weeks as they sail west from California past the Northern Hawaiian Islands as far as the International Date Line (180 degrees longitude) to sample areas of the Pacific Ocean previously un-sampled for plastic marine debris. We will be collecting samples of plastic debris, plankton and fish to analyze back in our laboratory to better understand not only the quantity of plastic debris pollution in remote areas of the ocean, but also the impacts the plastic is having as it is consumed by marine animals. Below is a map that shows the area where ORV Alguita has sampled for plastic pollution over the past 10 years. The first voyage of the summer expedition hopes to extend the study area all the way to the International Date Line at 180 degrees longitude.Who's on board?
Check out our crew's bios- http://orvalguita.googlepages.com/meetthecrew!