Member of the past president’s advisory committee of the St Ann Chamber of Commerce Joe Issa has, in his Easter message urged “all of us to do our part” to prevent plastics from reaching the shores and entering the oceans, poisoning fish, and eventually outnumbering planktons and destroying fish sources.
Issa, a Catholic Eucharistic Minister and environmental advocate, whose Cool Group participates in a plastics recycling project to remove the damaging wastes off the streets and coastlines, said “we all need to understand the problem we are dealing with in order to do something about it,” citing contents of an AFP article which he described as “frightening”.
According to the report, two decades after US boat captain Charles Moore in 1997 claimed he stumbled upon “plastic…as far as the eye could see” while sailing from Hawaii to southern California, a new study of the area has revealed that the amount of plastic is a lot more than the eye can see.
It said the three-year mapping project led by The Ocean Cleanup Foundation based in The Netherlands, has discovered that the problem is far worse than first thought.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch also is known as the ‘Pacific Trash Vortex’ now contains 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, 16 times higher than previous estimates, the experts reportedly warned.
Apparently, the plastic aggregates find their way to the area by the circular ocean currents which pick up rubbish along coastlines and swirl them into the centre.
It is estimated that items take around six years to reach the patch from the coast of the USA and around a year from Japan.
Previously, scientists are said to have used fine-meshed nets to trap the plastic and quantify how much rubbish has been accumulated, but the new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, has reportedly found that the method has vastly underestimated the problem.
The new study reportedly involved traditional trawling with nets, as well as aerial scanning to map plastic in the ocean in 3D.
The results show that the Garbage Patch is now three times the size of France, with nearly two trillion pieces of plastic, weighing the equivalent of 500 jumbo jets, according to the article.
The figures are said to be 4-16 times higher than previous estimates. Ninety-two (92) percent of the mass is represented by larger objects such as fishing nets, while eight percent of the mass was due to microplastics.
“We were surprised by the amount of large plastic objects we encountered,” Chief Scientist of the expeditions, Dr Julia Reisser, was quoted as saying.
“We used to think most of the debris consists of small fragments, but this new analysis shines a new light on the scope of the debris.”
By comparing the number of microplastics with historical measurements of the Garbage Patch, the team reportedly found that plastic pollution levels have been growing exponentially since measurements began in the 1970s.
According to the report, the estimated ratio of plastic to plankton is now 1:2 and, left unchecked, plastic will outweigh fish by 2050, the year in which it has been predicted by other surveys that the Caribbean waters will run out of fish.
It explained that plastic in the oceans is swallowed by marine animals that cannot digest it. Chemicals leak into the water, and it has been shown that even humans who eat seafood ingest 11,000 pieces of microplastic each year.
It cited Boyan Slat, Founder of The Ocean Cleanup Foundation and co-author of the study, elaborating on the relevance of the findings for his organisation’s cleanup plans.
“To be able to solve a problem, we believe it is essential to first understand it… These results provide us with key data to develop and test our cleanup technology, but it also underlines the urgency of dealing with the plastic pollution problem,” Slat reportedly said, adding, “Since the results indicate that the amount of hazardous microplastics is set to increase more than tenfold if left to fragment, the time to start is now.”
Holiday In Jamaica - Joseph Issa 