Three trillion pieces of plastic are floating in the Pacific Ocean, with 46,000 pieces per square mile throughout all the oceans of the world. About 85% of that refuse comes from land—trash from picnics, beach outings, and general litter gets caught up with wind and makes its ways to sea. Or rivers and streams carry it out.
I’m recently back from the middle of the Pacific where I sailed onboard the research vessel Alguita as it prepped to trawl the Eastern Garbage Patch (an area twice the size of Texas that floats between San Francisco and Hawaii).
Miles offshore Hilo, Hawaii, I hung with Captain Charles Moore and his crew as they began their winter voyage to California. Their mission is to investigate the size and scope of the plastic debris that pollutes the area to better understand its effect on marine life.
But the most devastating experience I had was on Kamilo Beach, just past the southern most point of the United States on the Big Island. Moore’s Algalita Institute claims this is the most polluted beach in the US.
The currents take trash here from all over the world. I found pill bottles from India, whiskey bottles from Japan, and plastic pieces of different sorts from Korea, Russia and China. Pirates, I’m told, used to come here because they knew it’s where dead bodies likely wash up (and loot). This is also where the first Hawaiians, it’s said, landed on shore. Now the beach is all trash, some intact, but mostly bits and pieces scattered about.
The affect of marine pollution is still unfolding, as fish swallow up those bits and pieces and the ocean floor becomes covered upsetting the balance of the marine ecosystem.
Largely, this refuse is too distant and diffuse for us to see. Here, however, its devastation washes up in front of you.
A new bill passed by the House of Representatives would authorize $750 million for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which does great research and conducts marine pollution prevention and cleanup efforts. The money will be well spent. But we need to take more preventative steps to thwart the crisis. When you see the beauty of the ocean and the beaches and then the magnitude of the trash problem here, it’s evident more severe environmental consequences are to follow.
The health and welfare of us all is at stake: More than 700 million people directly rely on fisheries for food. And the oceans are the world biggest carbon sink, sequestering CO2 to stop global warming.
Thomas M. Kostigen is The New York Times bestselling coauthor of 