As all good things must come to an end, so has my trip aboard the Maersk Launcher ended. Though the trip was not without it's stresses and bad weather and bouts of sea sickness, I found it amazingly hard to leave the comfort and familiarity of the ship behind. In almost a two-month voyage, the crew of The Ocean Cleanup and the Maersk crew felt more like family than anything else, and it was more difficult than I would have imagined to pack up all my stuff and leave! For the record, I did not cry upon seeing my first tree on land, though I definitely paused and had to touch a palm tree to make sure I wasn't dreaming! The craziest part of all of this is that I am ON OAHU NOW! There are birds and dogs and OTHER PEOPLE and ocean that meets land, which is NUTS!!! Adjusting to non-rolling ground underneath me has been a struggle as well - I tripped going up the stairs on the Launcher while we were in port...the first time I tripped going UP the stairs and naturally we weren't moving. Another awesome aspect of being on solid ground is that when putting say shoes on you don't have to THROW YOUR WEIGHT against any forces of the waves moving the ship...so needless to say I've almost fallen over while getting dressed more than a couple times...even since actually moving into Airbnb's and not even being in the ENVIRONMENT that the ground underneath me was rolling but I guess it'll be fine... I am wishing Wilson the best and am looking forward to seeing the results of the trial in the GPGP, but for now I'm gonna go enjoy the salt and sand and waves at the beach - the first beaches I've seen in nearly TWO WHOLE MONTHS!!! Goodbye Launcher, it's been a real pleasure and adventure and I know you'll have a place in my heart forever, but aloha Hawaii, I think we're gonna get along just fine.
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In the spirit of my favorite holiday being right around the corner, I helped in the organizing of a Halloween Party on the Maersk Launcher. There were paper bats lining the halls of the deck, there was excessive candy and coffee, and best of all almost HALF of the people that attended went in costume!!! As one of the only Americans on the vessel, I felt it was my duty to bring some spooky cheer to the crew, especially as our trip is winding down - we've all been working so hard together and such long hours, it felt like the least we could do was lighten the mood and share a night of laughs! As we were not planning on having a Halloween party onboard, the costumes had to be creative AND made using only the materials available to us on the vessel. We had a mermaid trapped in plastic, a witch, a blue whale, a fish, a mummy, a castaway and many more! Yours truly attended the party as Marine DeBREE (thanks to a friend in Miami for giving me the idea AGES ago) and we had a lovely night enjoyed in the company of friends and silly costumes and just a little too much sugar. It's the little moments like this that I'm definitely going to miss, but I'm excited that we got to share at least one last night of genuine fun on the Launcher. In addition, I'm beyond THRILLED to have a costume that matches my blog title: This costume is, in fact, trash! I'm a little nervous about seeing shore for the first time in almost two months, but I'm also definitely looking forward to not having the world constantly moving. A couple days ago we left Wilson behind to the GPGP. It's super crazy to wake up in the morning and not have the barrier somewhere nearby, and even stranger when at night the only lights outside the boat are the stars and moon. Another crazy part of leaving the barrier behind is to be going so quickly! We are FLYING at the breathtaking speed of 10 knots! I know, I know, we're speed demons out here, but to be entirely honest, we've been traveling at the snail's pace of 3 knots (and slower) for over a month now. Seeing the ocean passing by so quickly is exhilarating! We are en route to Hawaii as our final destination for this vessel, and I can't imagine how weird it's going to be to see people OTHER than the people on the ship! Another super crazy concept to me is the concept of PLANTS!!! WOW!!! I can't even describe how THRILLED I am to see a real living plant - I might cry. Nature is lovely and the ocean is SPECTACULAR but I think I've missed green more than I'd like to admit. More updates on my reaction to plants to come! 42 is the magic number that has been defined in my life as the answer to life, the universe, and everything (thanks Douglas Adams, and especially Mom and Dad for hooking me on scifi early), so every 42 has a little bit of extra meaning. Today marks 42 days at sea, and I thought I would share some of the lessons learned and wisdom that comes from spending this much time offshore. #1) Adult life is sharing a post on Facebook and restraining yourself from yelling at your friends and family "WOOOO WE OUT HERE" because it's a tad bit unprofessional, and instead sharing it on your blog because honesty is important and the mission of this blog. Sometimes I'm amazed that I hold a degree because I have been known to talk to fish (or beg them to jump out of the water again), or name my buoys (Not Bob, Scuttle, Hei Hei, Sebastian, and Kasper are attached to the barrier folks), and generally have continued using the same beach/surf slang I've gathered since childhood. In moments like this I do have to remind myself that it's okay to be myself, especially because there's not a whole lot of science to be done other than waiting for my buoys to continue taking their measurements. #2) As long as you can play off that you almost fell over as being due to something OTHER than the ship's movement in the swell you can TOTALLY make it as a passenger on an offshore vessel. #3) I totally want to keep on living that good boat life and REALLY want to sail across the Pacific in a sailboat. Not wisdom per se, but definitely something I've learned on this journey and thought I would share. WE MADE IT FOLKS!!! We have successfully installed Wilson in the U-shape in the GPGP! To be entirely honest, it doesn't quite feel real yet - after almost a month and a half of towing and testing to get to this point is pretty crazy! It's been a long time coming - and yesterday we even got to install my buoys on the System! I can't believe that after a year of pondering this project and its possible implications I have the opportunity to help monitor the biological impact of the system ACTUALLY sitting in the Patch!! It's a great start into the second year of my Master's for sure! An even better ending to the day yesterday was a GIGANTIC rainbow that spread from one side of the Launcher and stretched to the sea on the other side! Nothing like a lucky omen for the beginning of a project (or you know, master's research thesis but hey)! With respect to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, well, there's definitely more plastic here than elsewhere we've been. It's really more disheartening and sad to see than I was expecting - I've seen marine debris before. Somehow knowing that even though we're almost as far from land as you can be, there's still the overwhelming sense that humans are having an incredibly negative impact on our oceans. This effect was magnified when we went out on the Megamaid today and could see firsthand just how much plastic is out here - the sizes range from big to around the size of a fingernail - and that's just what we can see moving at around 3 knots! Who knows how much more we'd see if we had gotten to go out for more than just a few hours? At any rate, there's a LOT of plastic, and I'm excited to see how the System performs under these circumstances! Aside from the elation of finally being where we've been trying to get, boat life has really changed after 6 weeks! I can proudly say that I can sleep comfortably with most any swell (within reason), however I still apparently cannot put pants on in 3 meter swell without falling into the wall of my room so I guess we haven't come as far as I might like, but you can't win them all! Though things have been pretty good - last week I hosted a screening of Disney's Moana for those onboard that would be interested in THE COOLEST DISNEY MOVIE TO DATE! This has the benefit of sharing a happy animated with the crew and (my favorite part) is there is a subset of grown men singing "SHINYYYY" at any and all opportunities, which is honestly a fantastic part of ANY day! Well this week has been another week of towing Wilson behind the Launcher, which invariably leads to relatively limited activities. The sun came back out yesterday and I think it definitely helped with bringing spirits up - I know it helped me out a bunch! This week marks an important event in my life - I GOT TO SEE DORADO FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE!!! There was a small school of them hanging out off the bow of the Launcher! The ship tows pretty slowly - the other night I calculated it and we are moving at approximately the average speed I swim when I'm in a pool doing a workout! Me and the Launcher could TOTALLY race (except that she can go REALLY fast if she wants). Another thing was brought to my attention by my friend on the vessel yesterday: a couple posts ago I mentioned the time change and how we all gained an hour and got to sleep extra. Well my buddy is a navigator and has the watch from midnight until 4am (I'm pretty sure) and so when the time changed and went backwards at 1am...well his watch was an hour longer. Major bummer, but I'm really glad we have navigators that take watches because making sure nothing bad happens on the ship while I'm sleeping is a big comfort. Thanks Navigators! Growing up in California, rainy days and "real weather" were few and far between. As such, rainbows have always been a treat and they're something that my mother has delighted in for as long as I can remember. Because of this, I have always viewed rainbows as a sort of magic and have thought that good luck follows spotting them. In Miami, I have delighted in the near-daily summer rainstorms that bring with them lovely views of rainbows at sunset over the research vessel at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, but I'm not sure anything prepared me for the magic of seeing a rainbow over Wilson while in the middle of the Pacific Trials. Since I have received multiple requests for more pictures on the blog, I'm looking at you Uncle Mike, I thought I'd share this one with y'all. This was captured from the relative comfort of the Megamaid, my home away from home (where home in this case is the Launcher, but hey it is what it is). There may be no days fully dedicated to rest, BUT we did have the pleasure of a time change as we are moving west and have made some serious distance since we started our trip 31 days ago! 31 DAYS AT SEA?! The time has absolutely FLOWN. At the same time, the comforts of home and land do seem really far away, so it may just be a matter of perspective. In addition to a time change that allowed everyone an extra hour of sleep, we had BRUNCH yesterday AND a barbecue! Life at sea isn't so bad when you're surrounded by AWESOME people! The seas are picking up, which has definitely led to some stumbling around in the stairwell and hallways but it also made the jam session in the rec room last night all the more magical - you didn't have to put any effort into swaying to the music! And YES I did mean jam session, we had a guitar and a ukulele and some wonderful music being made as the day was winding down. Music has been a passion of mine as long as I can remember and being able to share it on the high seas with the coolest crew around has been an absolute highlight of the trip! Happy Monday y'all! I feel like I spend an inordinate amount of my free time on this vessel napping, and I don't think I'm alone in that use of time. Existence at sea is apparently one that lends itself well to the cat lifestyle: sleeping whenever and where-ever possible. I thought I was good at napping on shore but my existence on the Launcher has turned that thought on its head - I think this week alone I've napped more days than not...which is probably where all of the excess energy comes from while I'm awake. At any rate, towing days are tough because even though we're busy there isn't exactly a TON to do - not to mention it limits my time aboard my beloved Megamaid but its chill - it gives me more time to SLEEP! Since I was a kid, I feel like it has been reinforced that the scientific process is one of trial and, far more often than I'd like, error. As a kid I learned about science with a sort of starry eyed wonder - how could scientists just go out into the world and DISCOVER? And as I grew up, I took the required science classes and discovered, much to my dismay, that science can be pretty aptly described as a series of happy, well-timed accidents with a little bit of brilliance and good luck (*and on more than a few occasions, bad luck) thrown in the mix. Confused and intrigued, I continued to pursue my fascination with science by chasing down a Bachelor's in Biology. This endeavor took me around the world to Australia where I was faced with my first serious struggle with the scientific method. I'll paint the picture - there we were on the Great Barrier Reef, tasked with studying a symbiotic relationship between a species of crab an type of coral. Putting our four heads together, we engineered this brilliant system of mounting GoPros above the coral colony of interest and PRESTO we'd have video footage of the crabs' interactions with their coral host! Well that design was an INCREDIBLE failure. We couldn't see ANYTHING in the footage we took. This was the first experimental design that I had had the opportunity to contribute to EVERY aspect of the experiment and was my first true head-on interaction with the absolute FRUSTRATION of having a brilliantly (or at least so we thought) design come back and just crash and burn. Determined to try again and, if for no other reason than our grade relied entirely on having a project where we had SOME FORM of successful data collection, we managed to put our heads together again and come up with a different form of observation which allowed us to cover even more colonies each observation AND gave us reliable results! This process has since been ingrained in my mind as part of the scientific process. For every success there has been lots of thought and reconsideration and occasionally just throwing your best at the problem and hoping for the best (at least in ecology to my experience), so with good faith and a fair dose of hope, I had the opportunity to try out my buoys at their attachment points on Wilson during the Pacific Trials. With hope and some trepidation, I prepped my two buoys (an arduous task of removing a single magnetic pin from each buoy being deployed), and gave them to the people going out in the workboat to attach to the System 001. Pictured below, I'd like to introduce Bob the Buoy. Bob was deployed for TWO WEEKS on the barrier during the Pacific Trials, and for the most part, he performed SPECTACULARLY! As the days wore on and we conducted our tests and monitoring of Wilson during the Trials, I got to say "hi" to Bob on pretty much a daily basis. As my first buoy in the water, I was particularly attached to this little dude. However, we hit a pretty rough spell of weather (see Bree almost falling off the treadmill for an approximate 5 day period) and both buoys remained attached at their critical attachment points! YAY! The experimental design WORKED! But then as the time passed, it became apparent that one of the buoys had suffered some damage either in the storm or due to the storm, and eventually, Bob stopped working and had to be removed from the trial. Well this is my goodbye and obituary to a fantastic buoy. Bob was a fixture in the Trials, and he will be remembered as we continue our way to the GPGP and beyond. Thanks for the soundings Bob, you will be missed. Y'all we just got the okay to GO ON TO THE Great Pacific Garbage Patch! Wilson was put through numerous tests in the Pacific Trials including the U-shape installation, maintaining sufficient speed through water, ability to reorient when wind or wave direction changes, and effective span (opening-width) in steady state! Go Wilson go!!! We have been sitting around 350 nautical miles off the coast of California through some rough weather, through the installation process, and through monitoring Wilson closely for the last 17ish days! I cannot even begin to describe how excited I am (and I think the rest of the crew too XD) to see the system in action in the Garbage Patch! Hopefully we'll get there in relatively good time - crossing our fingers for no storms en route (I did knock on wood writing that - GOTTA BE SAFE). The trip to the GPGP is two weeks of towing approximately, though if I've learned anything on this journey, it's that the ocean determines our speed and effectiveness of towing and other operations. So we shall see what kind of timeline we are looking at as we begin to make our way out to the Garbage Patch. It has come to my attention that there have been a number of spelling errors on my blog and seeing as our operations on board the vessel tend to be more limited while towing I'm going to be on the lookout for my typos - though if anyone has any that jump to mind if you wouldn't mind leaving a comment on that post it would be much appreciated by this Trash Scientist. Happy October! Gross post ahead: not for those that don't like bugs! Alrighty well here we are - out in the middle of the Pacific and it IS the month of spookyness and too-much-sugar-ingestion so naturally I stumbled into some bad luck! I got LICE!!!! In all of my 23 years I've managed to avoid the nasty little bugs that have recently taken up their unwelcome residence on my head. BUT ever the optimist - I went to the ship's medic and we are combatting the problem head-on! HAHAHAHAHA At any rate, moving on, another American on the vessel and I are trying to plan a Halloween celebration on the Launcher because we have SO MANY TOOLS at our disposal to make some of the coolest spur-of-the-moment Halloween costumes EVER!!! Additionally, there is a little "shop" where sweets can be purchased on the vessel - so basically it's gonna be the coolest Halloween on the high seas (and quite possibly one of the only Halloweens on the high seas but it's chill)!!! Today I am feeling really thankful for the day and age we live in - I have been able to call my mom whenever things have been overwhelming (read I GOT FREAKING LICE THREE WEEKS INTO MY CRUISE!!!) and she's always been there with a song when I've been low, the most recent being about gross bugs crawling all over me...but it's the thought that counts <3 and I guess hearing her voice helped me laugh about it a little harder than I would have before. Sorry about the gross post for the day but THIS IS THE REALEST THING TO HAVE HAPPENED OUT HERE SO FAR! Welcome to the wonderful world of working and living and staying on boats! Happy Spooky Month! Hi all! It's been a while - I've been up to some all-day adventures aboard the work boat we have on the Launcher which has definitely left me with minimal time to be writing. At any rate: working on a boat that is deployed off a bigger boat is such a TRIP! I thought parallel parking in Miami was a tricky business, but getting a small boat that is influenced by waves back on a bigger boat that is only kinda influenced by the big swells is WAYYY more hardcore than that! I have a daily reminder that offshore life is so much more complicated than my day-to-day onshore - it's CRAZY. Another note on being in a small boat - you really feel the ocean moving beneath you. In the Launcher we tend to roll with the swell, which has been significant a couple times this trip (read 5-6 meter swells OH GOSH) but even 2 meter swell feels GIANT in the work boat, though the nice part has been that it's JUST LIKE being on whale watching boats as a kid - and I KNOW that I look exactly the same as when I was out on those boats - beaming from ear to ear as my hair gets tangled in the wind. There's nothing quite like it. An update on our favorite plastic-eating U-shaped Wilson: he's been put through a couple week of Pacific Trials, and there are a few more things that need to happen before we can move out to the Garbage Patch, so we're keeping on keeping on and going through the tests so that we can go and try to catch some plastic! Well, we have been sitting for a couple days with REALLY BIG swells and honestly it sometimes feels like I've been out here for hours rather than days! I think of these swells as really big because they are rocking the boat a LOT more than they have in the calm days we had when we first got here - I'm sure that REALLY BIG waves make these look really small, but everything is about perspective so we're HANGING OUT IN BIG SWELL. Now there's been quite a bit of stumbling around on my part and some days it just feels like I'm a toddler stumbling around confused by gravity - for example, I'll be on deck talking to some of the Maersk crew and as the swell lifts the boat I'll end up "falling" a few steps in the direction the boat is tilting only to return to my original place as the boat rocks back. The offshore crew, of course, stay in the same location through all of these exchanges, which leaves me to be moderately flustered (to really flustered if I've really miscalculated the size of the swell), but at any rate, I laugh at least as much as I stumble around the boat. XD Something that is dramatically IMPROVED by having significant swell is movies that feature boats and/or space ships! I hosted a movie night with Star Wars Episode 4 and WOW IT IS INTENSE WHEN THE SHIP YOU ARE ON IS SHAKING WITH THE SPACE SHIPS IN BATTLE!!! Who needs 3D movies when I can just watch them offshore??? We're looking at a nice weather window for the next couple days so I'm hoping for a mellow spell and am crossing my fingers for another day off soon! Let's take a second to appreciate how BIG the Maersk Launcher really is. There are THREE BOATS ON THIS BOAT!!! This boat is BIG ENOUGH TO HOLD THREE SMALLER BOATS LIKE ITS NOTHING!!! I'm still reeling at the concept. Y'all I went a full WEEK not knowing where the third boat was HIDING?!?! WHAT??? Anyway. I think it's pretty cool. Moving on... Yesterday I got to go out in the workboat to help conduct some tests during the Pacific Trials and WOW! Even the Launcher looks small in comparison with the rest of the Pacific out here. I thought I had a concept for how big the ocean was, but let me tell you, being out in it on a relatively small boat is truly humbling. The swells are no joke and even Wilson seems like a small speck in a HUGE body of water (which is exactly what he is but STILL). The ocean is HUGEEEEE. It brings to mind Douglas Adams, only instead of space it's the ocean...The ocean is big. Really big - it's just so big you can't wrap your mind around just how big it is... Today has been a rough day on the water so I've mainly been inside crunching numbers for thesis things, though this morning I did get to spend some time on deck. It takes BIG swells to rock the boat like this, so seeing them and feeling the wind on my face was enough to convince me that being inside all day may be worth it. Looking forward to helping conduct more tests in the Pacific Trials when the weather calms. Hoping for some calmer seas tomorrow! Last night at a group meeting we were informed that today would be a day off – a much needed break, I might add. So what’s a girl to do on her day off? Well first of all, I had the luxury of sleeping in ALL THE WAY UNTIL 7:45 before my body was like LET’S GET STARTED. Not one to miss out on a cup of coffee over the water, I made my way down to the mess (where there’s access to coffee 24/7) in my manatee pajama pants and poured myself a BIG OLE CUP of black coffee and climbed the you-guessed-it 75 steps to the bridge where I could enjoy the coffee looking out over the blue water. I don’t know what it is about spending time at sea/out in nature but it always somehow brings out the deep down love I have for black coffee. It’s odd. BRUNCH was served at 10:00, which I learned later was a real treat since apparently normally Sundays are days off but meals usually occur at normally scheduled hours. After brunch it was such an odd feeling to just putter around the boat, but that’s what I did! It was MAGIC!!! I got to read on the bridge WITHOUT FEELING GUILTY of not doing anything BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE DAY WAS FOR!!! After reading in the sun and fearing a sunburn, I bought another bag of Salt and Vinegar Chips and watched a big chunk of Disney’s The Princess and The Frog. After the fun of watching a movie, I got to help set up for the BARBEQUE WE HAD ON THE MAIN DECK!!! We got to go digging around in the working part of the boat looking for chairs and tables and setting them up on the deck and scrubbing them down. It was a great team effort and the barbeque was a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon because it started at 4, when the sun was still high in the sky. It was really a treat because we got to pass around a rugby ball – what’s a barbeque without backyard (or in this case back deck?) sports?! Also, who else gets to say they played (sorta) rugby on the open ocean? NOT MANY I CAN TELL YOU THAT! The day was rounded out with a couple hours of playing cards with both other The Ocean Cleanup crew as well as Maersk crew. It has been a much-needed day of rest after almost 2 weeks of going from morning to (sometimes late into) the night! Even rewarding work requires a break on occasion, and today was the perfect day to recharge and reset for this week! Looking forward to what the week will bring! How the time has FLOWN! It's been a week of sailing aboard the Maersk Launcher and it feels like almost no time has passed at all! Though there have definitely been some marked improvements in offshore life for me. Highlights include:
However, we have also experienced some things not getting better - low points include:
Overall, life has been good to me aboard this ship. This morning actually started with my alarm going off at 5:50am (ughhh) with some Rice Crispies and black coffee all before our meeting at 6:15am. We are happily at the beginning of the Pacific Trials for Wilson/System 001 so today and the next few promise to be long but rewarding ones. Though getting up super early offshore has its drawbacks (see smashing face into reading light because I thought I slept through my alarm...), the sunrise this morning was absolutely SPECTACULAR! I'd also be lying if I said I didn't like it just a little (okay a lot) that I get up before the sun to put in WORK! It's really tough work because a lot of what we've been doing on the vessel has been largely physical labor, but it's super rewarding. So far life has been work, work, work - which is why I haven't been updating the blog as much, but rest assured I'm out here living my best offshore life and trying to do science-type things, though my research project for my thesis doesn't start for some time yet. At any rate I'm happy to be helping out with any and every aspect of this project I can! I had the pleasure earlier this summer to go offshore sailing with two friends. We sailed from Miami to North Carolina and I got to experience the Atlantic Ocean at its finest: just our little boat and blue water as far as the eye could see. There's something so amazingly peaceful about being out on the water in this sense - the water goes on and on but your home for the moment is softly rocking beneath you and everything feels right. This could be proof that I've totally and completely lost my marbles but being back out here on the water I get to share this feeling with a whole SHIP of other people. Truly it's something I would absolutely recommend to anyone and everyone because the moments you get are unforgettable.
We have an evening meeting with our crew each night to check in and followed by this meeting we usually have our knot class (today we learned the bowline y'all - I'm gonna be a salty sailor sooner rather than later!) and tonight I made it up to the bridge before the sunset, which was a real treat. Without the light pollution or buildings or ANYTHING to get in the way of the sun creeping closer to the horizon allows for the entire sky to change from blues to brilliant pinks and oranges that fill an ENORMOUS part of the sky that remains unobstructed (except for clouds, of which today there were relatively few)! Tonight I was reminded that we are not alone on this immeasurably big ocean as a gigantic container ship passed us by, floating along the horizon. It was funny to see something else man made and feel that the container ship was the intruder on my view, because as I sit here and type this I can look out behind the ship and see the friendly (functional, but friendly to look at) lights on Wilson bobbing up and down behind our boat. When things are peaceful on the ship, the time out here is honestly pretty serene. My project and the project being tackled by System 001/Wilson are centered around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a region of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Famous in the media as the "trash island in the Pacific", the garbage patch is not an island! Though this is not news to those that are intimately familiar with the details of the region, it isn't common knowledge, and since I started this blog to share what it's like to be a scientist, I thought I'd start by debunking the pop-culture explanation for the area I'm studying! Conveniently, The Ocean Cleanup (and collaborating groups) published a paper in Scientific Nature Reports on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (from here on I'm going to call it the GPGP okay? perfect, thanks for the input)! If you want to read the paper, you can access it here. Otherwise I'm going to summarize and focus on some of the takeaways that are important to know moving forward. This image is taken from Lebreton et al., 2018 and shows the concentrations of mass in the GPGP. So as you can see, the estimation of the GPGP is based on concentrations per area of the surface waters, which at the maximum is 100 kg (or around 200 pounds) per square kilometer (1km is almost half a mile). So I guess to the untrained eye estimating concentration of debris by surface area could LOOK like a trash island, this really is just not what's occurring. What we actually end up with is a really gross slush/soup of plastic that not only occur at the surface, but permeate the water column as well - extending down and sometimes sinking and settling on the ocean floor or getting taken up into the food chain. The paper predicts that there is an estimated 79,000 tons of plastic floating in 1.6 million square kilometers. In addition to this, the paper estimates that there are 1.8 TRILLION INDIVIDUAL pieces of plastic floating in this area!!! That's CRAZY! Though this is the largest of the 5 major ocean gyres THERE'S FOUR OTHER GYRES THAT ALL HAVE MORE GARBAGE FLOATING IN THEM!!! THIS IS THE SCOPE OF THE PROBLEM WE ARE TRYING TO TACKLE! Well this problem is isolated isn't it? If The Ocean Cleanup succeeds in getting the plastic out of the ocean that solves it right? WRONG! In conducting my literature review for my thesis I've found some alarming numbers in papers that I really want to take the time to share. One paper (Geyer et al., 2017) found that 79% of all plastic ever made has accumulated in landfills or the natural environment. 79%?!?!?! ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?! I thought it was recyclable??? But when it's sitting in a landfill it is taking up valuable space AND also poses the potential for leaching toxins into our natural environment (thanks AP Environmental Science)! But the problem continues as we continue to explore the problem. Some of the plastic that enters the oceans are buoyant and float along the surface to reach the gyre - creating the GPGP. We have seen on multiple occasions (Gregory, 2009; Rech et al., 2016) that these floating "rafts" of plastic offer surfaces for marine organisms to hitch a ride to different parts of the ocean. These rafts can introduce non-native/invasive species to new environments, which can allow them to out-compete natural and native species and can potentially change the ecosystems where they land. There is a slew of other problems associated with marine plastic, I hope this has been a good opening case for why we should do something about marine plastics. The Ocean Cleanup, Debris Free Ocean, and 4Ocean, are all organizations dedicated to the removal of plastic from the oceans. In addition to removing the plastic, we need to prevent it's arrival at sea in the first place. With both of these tactics, I believe that we can begin to move forward towards oceans that are plastic free. :D (I couldn't end on a downer note so let's try to be positive). I cited a few papers in my discussion, and I've included a works cited here because I cannot explain how frustrated I get after reading articles in newspapers and such that make claims and give me nothing to back them up so below please find my works cited (all from peer-reviewed scientific journals). If you want to go and read them and dispute my claims feel free - it's all part of the process! I think you should be able to find them via Google Scholar and if you can't, then feel free to send me an email and I'll send you a PDF. At any rate, if you don't take anything else away from this post: IT'S NOT A TRASH ISLAND PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD! Works Cited
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to run on a top that isn't spinning well? Because that is approximately what it feels like running on a ship that is in decent swell - and most certainly what I experienced this evening, it being the first time I've run while we've been in any height of swell. I've personally looked at the handrails on a treadmill and thought "Why would I use these if I'm running?" Well, I found out why - when the boat pitches and you're in the air and you come down partially on the not-moving part of the treadmill - THAT'S WHAT THEY'RE THERE FOR!!! ...in case it wasn't clear I had 3 close calls on the treadmill tonight and WOW the adrenaline rush from thinking that you're going to go FLYING off the back of a treadmill is a GOOD one!!! The gym on the boat is basic and functional and tonight I got to share it with crew from both The Ocean Cleanup AND the Launcher which was fun because I got to workout with people (as opposed to alone) and I got to see that EVERYONE loves them some good "Another One Bites the Dust" while working out because Queen is ALWAYS called for. I was also convinced to push harder during my workout by the crew from the Launcher which was fun too! Knowing that on board there's a community that is active is great and gives us more to talk about since we're all gonna be on this ship together another 6ish weeks! Guess what - I CLIMBED SO MANY LESS STAIRS TODAY! Life is good - I found the people I needed to find, I only almost fell on the ground due to wave swells like 5 times AND I helped conduct a part of an oceanographic study today! We are KILLING IT!!! Luckily for me, there was more down time today than yesterday which allowed for one of my favorite past-times - getting to know the people around me! Everyone on this vessel both The Ocean Cleanup crew as well as the Maersk Launcher crew has wonderful insights into sailing, the ocean, and/or myriad other topics that I don't even think to ask about but get to learn about anyway! This afternoon was spent sitting in the sun shooting the breeze with one of my fellow crew mates where we talked and talked about environmentalism, fisheries, and the funny qualities of life - like how you can plan and plan for things to happen but in the end you end up somewhere else entirely, or get there circuitously. Another wonderful experience was getting to talk to our cook, who is also a woman working in a male-dominated industry. We talked about that for a while and what it's like to work on a vessel like this - the people working offshore work on for 6 months out of the year and spend 6 months of the year off, though usually this is separated into chunks of time. On the Launcher that means 6 weeks on and 6 weeks off, though where you get dropped off the boat might be a completely different CONTINENT from the place you call home. I don't think I'd ever thought about how the shipping industry works, but I think I'll take my relatively stable academic calendar with set breaks over this schedule. We shall see. Speaking of spending a long time on boats, I'm hoping that by the end of a week I will adjust to the constant rolling onboard - this morning I almost fell into my trashcan in my room as I was putting my shirt on for the day because the boat pitched in an unexpected direction as I had both my arms tangled up in the relatively simple task of putting on clothes. :D I laugh a lot because I find it amazingly funny to have everything I've known turned on its head (at least that's how it feels for now). Showering for the first time as the boat was rolling was a very funny experience - they have bars for you to hold on to in the shower and I remember looking at them in port wondering if I would use them. Now the name of the game is mostly trying to wedge myself into the corner of shower and try to work up a lather on my bar of soap with my hands before the boat pitches the other direction. Like I said, I laugh a lot - these situations are just not normal in my day to day life! Honestly all of this craziness has made me wonder more about how astronauts do it - at least there's mostly normalcy on the boat - in space EVERYTHING has to be different! It's a crazy world we live in! WOW WOW WOW!!!! I just experienced laundry aboard the Launcher for the first time today and wow I can't get over it - the process is silly easy: you just put your laundry into smallish laundry bag and upon filling said laundry bag, you simply place it outside your door and within a few hours LIKE MAGIC it returns to outside your door folded. I'm getting spoiled out here - I don't have to cook for myself, I don't have to wash my clothes myself, heck I don't even do my own DISHES! What an existence this is. Losing my sense of house skills and duties frees me up to spend time doing important things (like updating my blog ;p) such as learning how to tie knots like a sailor! One of The Ocean Cleanup's crew has spent 16 years working on the sea as a fisherman and has taken it upon himself to teach us the skills necessary to secure loads and tie off containers. Amazingly practical considering that almost everything we are using to do our research out here is stored in shipping containers on the deck, which I feel the need to remind everyone is constantly rolling back and forth with the movement of the waves. Though we've only gone through two knots, the passing on of this skill gives us time to bond and spend time on deck - last night just as the sun was going down we were on the deck tying knots and taking in the views. Happily my stomach decided to buy in to the whole "being at sea" thing and my brain no longer tries to throw itself into a crazy Disneyland Tea Cups spin! I feel like I'm well on my way to becoming a salty sailor - which was the goal (aside from my thesis research and, you know, contributing to an amazing project, obviously) of coming on this ship in the first place! Yarghhh! In case anyone was wondering, it is 75 stairs between the main deck and the bridge (the place where the captain steers the boat from). Ask me how many flights of unnecessary stairs I've done today? Too many. The stairs also have the fun quality of being remarkably steep, something I've noticed when visiting the The Ocean Cleanup's headquarters in Europe. Not sure why the US has super flat short stairs but this whole climbing thing is a WORKOUT let me tell you. It's also a fun dance to get in and out of the boat - to be on deck we wear our personal protective equipment which translates into me sliding in and out of coveralls, safety boots, eye protection, gloves, and a hard hat say, 5 or 6 times a day because "work clothes" stay outside and away from our living quarters. I am totally for having a safe and clean living environment but I have taken my boots off and/or put them on unnecessarily around 3 times today and the rage is palpable. I may just be tired...to be determined. I'll let y'all know how I feel about unnecessary boot removal tomorrow. For the moment let's talk about sleeping on a rolling boat. Now about 90% of the time it's like being smoothly rocked to sleep like a baby (or at least as close as I can imagine because my memory of that time of my life is nonexistent). For about 10% of the time, the sense I have laying in bed is that same one you have where you're falling in a dream, only instead of waking up either the boat slowly begins to roll the other way or I sit up FAST against the crazy forces I've only experienced on boats or on roller coasters. It's super bizarre. I wish I had more to say about life at sea but today a lot of my day was just going up and down stairs and continuing a (never ending?) literature review for my thesis. OH I do have something of interest: some of the crew on the Launcher have a little "candy shop" that sells candy and convenience items. You guessed it. I caved. TWO DAYS ON THE OCEAN and those Salt and Vinegar Pringles were calling my name. Salt and vinegar never tasted better than that first chip in my room this afternoon/evening. My concept of time is messed up because I changed my clock to ship time AND 24 hour clock and I'm all kinds of turned around. Anyway, check back in whenever you feel like it - I read/heard somewhere that the key to keeping your readers interested is to be consistent, so I'll probably be posting to this daily(ish) depending on my responsibilities! Cheers to those that are reading! On the Restorative Quality of Neil Gaiman's Voice and Other Tricks Learned After 1 Day at Sea...9/9/2018 Alrighty folks it's been more than 1 full day at sea and let me tell you...staring at a computer screen makes me feel greener than just about anything. This is a fun concept because I'm definitely supposed to be writing more of my thesis and you know...generally be keeping up with the world but I'm sure everything will be fine. As someone who has spent almost every opportunity that she's been presented with on the water, I found it truly disheartening when after the elation of passing under the Golden Gate Bridge had passed, I was left with a VERY upset stomach and a confused mind - how was it possible for me to be feeling seasick? ME?! At any rate, I tried to go about my day as planned, which was to say I waited and waited until dinner time by successfully sneaking some cookies and coffee around tea-time (which I am fresh back from right now, thanks) and waited feeling green as all get out. Hoping to keep things light and easy for dinner I grabbed what I thought was soup. So what I grabbed turned out HOT and SPICY enough for me to question every life decision before one of my crew mates gently asked if I had grabbed sauce instead of the soup. Wishing I could just put my face into my plate I gingerly ate everything else I had grabbed hoping that and some Sprite (the closest thing I can find to ginger ale,) would settle my stomach. It worked for all of about 10 minutes before I gave up on feeling good and decided to try reading in the recreation room on the vessel. Tragically the rec room is where the smoking room on the vessel is and the wafting scent of cigarette smoke did exactly nothing for my already trashed stomach. Upon returning to my cabin/stateroom/room/whatever I'm going to consistently call it, I felt like questioning why anyone would ever work on a vessel to go overseas for shipping/research purposes. Miserable I tried watching a movie and came to the conclusion that the rolling of the vessel along with the weird location of my bunk (I'm perpendicular to the bow rather than the bed being pointed toward the bow) that movie-watching would be an impossible task without something resembling someone reading me a bedtime story like I was a child. It came to me in a flash - I have Neil Gaiman reading his Norse Mythology on my computer! My night was saved! Listening to the voice of one of my favorite authors reading a story that took me anywhere that wasn't on my rolling bunk was like MAGIC. I fell asleep within one story and woke up about half and hour later wondering where I was when the ship rolled and I remembered that I was at sea. However, rather than the atrocious stomach ache of seasickness, I was left with just a slight feeling of dizziness akin to drunkenness that followed me into this morning. Luckily for me, the work I had to do today was out on the deck, which was an absolute blessing compared with being cooped up in the two hours following breakfast. I've spent maximum time outside today, which in my book is always a win and even though the conditions today are pretty trash (it's been confirmed by both the crew of the Launcher as well as my fellow Ocean Cleanup crew members that have spent time at sea), I could go about my tasks in helping set up equipment for various research projects without a HITCH y'all. I am looking forward to the day that I don't feel entirely sleepy/dizzy all day but I think for now I'm just thankful for a big boat to combat the wind waves that are hitting us from the Pacific. She's my favorite ocean but she has been unforgiving today. OH and I almost forgot: our boy Wilson is doing GREAT today - last night they changed the configuration of how closely he is following the Launcher so when I went out on deck today I had a good little scare thinking that everyone was super calm EVEN THOUGH WE'D LOST OUR SYSTEM THAT WE WERE TRYING TO TOW! but then I found him farther back than I expected. Wilson is a CHAMP. Onwards and upwards, and if you've made it this far in following my journey thanks for following! I can't believe it but it's 15:00 and that means tea-time aboard the Maersk Launcher, though I haven't found my way to the Mess just yet. I am still reeling because WE DID IT!!! You can (re)watch the Live Stream of the launch of Wilson (see original post if you don't know who that is) here. And the absolutely crazy part is I get to have him in my sights ALL THE WAY until we arrive at the testing location for the Pacific Trials (more information on what that means here,) and then on to the Garbage Patch (which is located in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre about halfway between San Francisco and Honolulu) where he will begin his job as passive trash collector! So to begin, I woke up this morning and ate breakfast like any other day aboard the Launcher - you know that good morning shuffle until you can wrap your hands around a mug of steaming hot coffee and then around 8am (or 0800 if I'm really being annoyingly precise with this boat stuff) the anchor was raised. Steel transmits noise like NO OTHER so it was a relatively noisy process which culminated in us moving towards the Bay Bridge between San Francsico and Oakland. After lunch I donned my PPE (personal protective equipment for those not in the know ;p) and was greeted as I strolled out on deck by the San Francisco Fire Department spraying water like a fountain/boat as we passed under the Bay Bridge! It was totally crazy! We spent the two hours between lunch and passing under the Golden Gate Bridge at the top of the bridge (this bridge being the place where the captain can see everything and essentially the mission control center for the boat....SHIP...[gotta work on that offshore lingo and also finding out how to format my blog so I can strike through words]...). The way got really breezy after we passed south of Alcatraz AGAINST SHIPPING DIRECTION I MIGHT ADD BECAUSE we were approved to AND WE'RE JUST THAT COOL!!! But as we approached the bridge the ship had a lovely companion for the span of a few minutes - a great big male California Sea Lion (Zalophus californianus [only because I know that one off the top of my head...])! It was great to have that reminder of home as we were getting ready to get out onto the Pacific Ocean proper. For those wondering - no there are no pinnipeds (the biological group of seals, sea lions, and walruses) in Florida due to the human-driven extinction of the Caribbean Monk Seal. Tragic, but that's how the cookie crumbles, and in this case it means I get WAYYYY too excited upon seeing the beloved pinnipeds of my home state. Anyway... We passed under the Golden Gate Bridge to much cheering and festivities - the captain even honked (tooted? blew?) the horn of the ship! He definitely almost scared the entire crew of us standing on top of the bridge overboard! With the rolling sea underneath us and the absolutely incredible view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Wilson behind us we were in a celebratory mood when DOLPHINS came jumping into our line of site! Just at the start of a journey? What better luck could we ask for? And then as we continued past Baker Beach (which I had been to just last Saturday) we spotted a WHALE!!!! Good omens for the journey indeed. I'm going to wrap this up because I think there are goodies associated with tea time and if nothing else I could use a banana because its definitely two hours to dinner and I need something to get me there! One last moment: WOW! I'M A PART OF THE BIGGEST OCEAN CLEANUP IN HISTORY! |
AuthorBree Gibbs, here. I'm a recent Master's Grad just trying to share what it's like to be a trash scientist (for those who aren't in the know, I'm a marine biologist). Categories
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March 2021
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