XPost: sci.environment, talk.politics.guns, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: drooler@gmail.com   
      
   By Annie Roth   
   May 6, 2022   
   In 2019, the French swimmer Benoit Lecomte swam over 300 nautical miles   
   through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to raise awareness about marine   
   plastic pollution.   
      
   As he swam, he was often surprised to find that he wasn’t alone.   
      
   “Every time I saw plastic debris floating, there was life all around it,”   
   Mr. Lecomte said.   
      
   The patch was less a garbage island than a garbage soup of plastic   
   bottles, fishing nets, tires and toothbrushes. And floating at its surface   
   were blue dragon nudibranchs, Portuguese man-o-wars, and other small   
   surface-dwelling animals, which are collectively known as neuston.   
      
   Scientists aboard the ship supporting Mr. Lecomte’s swim systematically   
   sampled the patch’s surface waters. The team found that there were much   
   higher concentrations of neuston within the patch than outside it. In some   
   parts of the patch, there were nearly as many neuston as pieces of   
   plastic.   
      
   “I had this hypothesis that gyres concentrate life and plastic in similar   
   ways, but it was still really surprising to see just how much we found out   
   there,” said Rebecca Helm, an assistant professor at the University of   
   North Carolina and co-author of the study. “The density was really   
   staggering. To see them in that concentration was like, wow.”   
      
   The findings were posted last month on bioRxiv and have not yet been   
   subjected to peer review. But if they hold up, Dr. Helm and other   
   scientists say, it may complicate efforts by conservationists to remove   
   the immense and ever-growing amount of plastic in the patch.   
      
   The world’s oceans contain five gyres, large systems of circular currents   
   powered by global wind patterns and forces created by Earth’s rotation.   
   They act like enormous whirlpools, so anything floating within one will   
   eventually be pulled into its center. For nearly a century, floating   
   plastic waste has been pouring into the gyres, creating an assortment of   
   garbage patches. The largest, the Great Pacific Patch, is halfway between   
   Hawaii and California and contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic,   
   according to the Ocean Cleanup Foundation. All that trash turns out to be   
   a great foothold for living things.   
      
   The snail Recluzia species, viewed from the side oral end.Credit...Denis   
   Rieck   
      
   Violet snail Janthina species, viewed from the side, with a large bubble   
   raft made from snail mucus emerging from the water.Credit...Denis Rieck   
      
   Blue button Porpita species, viewed from above.Credit...Denis Rieck   
      
   The floating anemone Actinecta species, viewed from the side, with the   
   aboral float at the surface.Credit...Denis Rieck   
      
   Dr. Helm and her colleagues pulled many individual creatures out of the   
   sea with their nets: by-the-wind sailors, free-floating hydrozoans that   
   travel on ocean breezes; blue buttons, quarter-sized cousins of the   
   jellyfish; and violet sea-snails, which build “rafts” to stay afloat by   
   trapping air bubbles in a soap-like mucus they secrete from a gland in   
   their foot. They also found potential evidence that these creatures may be   
   reproducing within the patch.   
      
   “I wasn’t surprised,” said Andre Boustany, a researcher with the Monterey   
   Bay Aquarium in California. “We know this place is an aggregation area for   
   drifting plastics, so why would it not be an aggregation area for these   
   drifting animals as well?”   
      
   Little is known about neuston, especially those found far from land in the   
   heart of ocean gyres.   
      
   “They are very difficult to study because they occur in the open ocean and   
   you cannot collect them unless you go on marine expeditions, which cost a   
   lot of money,” said Lanna Cheng, a research scientist at the University of   
   California, San Diego.   
      
   Because so little is known about the life history and ecology of these   
   creatures, this study, though severely limited in size and scope, offers   
   valuable insights to scientists.   
      
   Blue sea dragons, Glaucus species, viewed from above with dark blue   
   ventral surfaces.Credit...Denis Rieck   
      
   By-the-wind sailor Velella species, viewed from above.Credit...Denis Rieck   
      
   A Portuguese man-of-war, Physalia species, viewed from the side, with the   
   float above the surface.Credit...Denis Rieck   
      
   A buoy barnacle, Dosima fascicularis, viewed from the side, with aboral   
   white float at the water’s surface.Credit...Denis Rieck   
      
   But Dr. Helm said there is another implication of the study: Organizations   
   working to remove plastic waste from the patch may also need to consider   
   what the study means for their efforts.   
      
   There are several nonprofit organizations working to remove floating   
   plastic from the Great Pacific Patch. The largest, the Ocean Cleanup   
   Foundation in the Netherlands, developed a net specifically to collect and   
   concentrate marine debris as it is pulled across the sea’s surface by   
   winds and currents. Once the net is full, a ship takes its contents to   
   land for proper disposal.   
      
   Dr. Helm and other scientists warn that such nets threaten sea life,   
   including neuston. Although adjustments to the net’s design have been made   
   to reduce bycatch, Dr. Helm believes any large-scale removal of plastic   
   from the patch could pose a threat to its neuston inhabitants.   
      
   “When it comes to figuring out what to do about the plastic that’s already   
   in the ocean, I think we need to be really careful,” she said. The results   
   of her study “really emphasize the need to study the open ocean before we   
   try to manipulate it, modify it, clean it up or extract minerals from it.”   
      
   Laurent Lebreton, an oceanographer with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation,   
   disagreed with Dr. Helm.   
      
   “It’s too early to reach any conclusions on how we should react to that   
   study,” he said. “You have to take into account the effects of plastic   
   pollution on other species. We are collecting several tons of plastic   
   every week with our system — plastic that is affecting the environment.”   
      
   Plastic in the ocean poses a threat to marine life, killing more than a   
   million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals,   
   according to UNESCO. Everything from fish to whales can become entangled,   
   and animals often mistake it for food and end up starving to death with   
   stomachs full of plastic.   
      
   Ocean plastics that don’t end up asphyxiating an albatross or entangling   
   an elephant seal eventually break down into microplastics, which penetrate   
   every branch of the food web and are nearly impossible to remove from the   
   environment.   
      
   One thing everyone agrees on is that we need to stop the flow of plastic   
   into the ocean.   
      
   “We need to turn off the tap,” Mr. Lecomte said.   
      
   https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/science/great-pacific-garbage-patch-   
   pollution.html   
      
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