Microbeads and the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

In the past couple of weeks I have been concentrating my research on the main products causing plastic pollution and solutions to fix them. In particular I was struck when I realized that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was really a big swamp-like area of floating garbage instead of a solid land mass of trash as many people are led to believe. The main problem with plastic, as I mentioned before, is that as it photodegrades in the ocean, it only breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces leading to millions of tiny plastic particles floating around instead of one digger piece of plastic. These tiny particles of plastic can be found outnumbering zooplankton 6:1 in some parts of the Pacific Ocean around the Garbage Patch. Furthermore, more tiny particles of plastic called microbes, can be found pre-made in girls beauty products such as face wash. Once microbeads end up in the ocean they are eaten first by zooplankton and small fish due to their resemblance to fish eggs. As smaller fish are continuously eaten by larger fish, the plastic and toxins in the microbeads continue to bioaccumulate instead of disappearing. They can affect the entire food chain- including us when we eat seafood. Fortunately, President Barack Obama signed the Microbead Free Waters Act of 2015 to phase out the production of microbeads in beauty products by 2020.

In order to learn about the other items that were poluting our oceans and our beaches, I volunteered in a beach cleanup over the weekend to help the community. When I reached the beach, I was pleasantly surprised to note that there was an abundance of trash and recycling cans dotting the beach so that people had the opportunity to get rid of their waste in a sustainable and non-polluting way. While I did find some trash buried in the sand, overall, there was much less garbage than I expected.

I also took a trip down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium over the weekend in order to earn more about sustainable methods that help save energy and marine life along the coast. Examples of coastal life shown below.









As I walked through the exhibits, I realized that they had a section on plastic and the North Pacific Gyre.




(Plastic taken from the Gyre)

What I took from the exhibit was while plastic could be deadly and very harmful to marine life, it could also be very beautiful as well. If people take the time to recycle plastic, they can turn it into art like the jellyfish made out of bottles below.





Through this process so far I've learned to see the silver lining in every cloud because if society allows us to only focus on the cloud and the negatives, then we'll never be looking for the solutions. My greatest setback is time right now as I am putting together my final project. My research is as complete as it can be at this point and I just need to put it all together.