picture of two ships and picture of rubber ducky. Text reads: So Far From Any Country’s Coastline - a found poem Offshore plastic Enters ocean gyres Few seafarers ever cross A gyre within a gyre Pacific trash vortex As far as the eye could see Never found a clear spot Western near Japan Eastern between Hawaii and California Highway that moves debris from one patch to another Swirling ocean currents Plastic inflow greater than outflow Island of trash floating A cloudy soup Tiny bits of plastic Intermixed with larger items, Such as fishing gear and shoes Containers, bottles, lids, Bottle caps, packaging straps, Eel trap cones, oyster spacers, ropes, and fishing nets Plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and styrofoam cups Bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments Rubber duckies 34,000 pieces of hockey gear Ghostnets
picture of brown, fuzzy, long-legged laysan albatross and sleek grey to black leatherback sea turtle. Text reads: Dominance of marine sourced plastics Purposely engineered durability in the marine environment Accidental and deliberate gear losses Due to inclement weather and illegal fishing Derelict fishing gear Block sunlight Entangled in abandoned plastic fishing nets Known as “ghost fishing” Often mistaken for food by marine animals Loggerhead sea turtles Laysan albatross chicks Making their way up the food web that includes humans Leach out and absorb harmful pollutants Polyethylene and polypropylene Bisphenol A (BPA) Plastics can also absorb PCBs Enter food chain when consumed Ephemeral purpose More than 40% only used once More produced in the last decade than ever before Manufactured in 12 different countries 9 different languages
picture of plastic trash back bagging parallel grooves into the bottom of the sea. Text reads: Photodegradation Break into tinier and tinier pieces The effects of sun, waves and marine life Sinks to the bottom of the ocean Accumulating in sediments and underwater canyons Underwater trash heap Negative impacts on the economy and marine habitats Impact on tourism, fisheries and aquaculture, and (governmental) cleanups Nets designed to scoop up trash would catch creatures as well 67 ships one year to clean up less than 1%
No nation will take responsibility **Lebreton, L. ,et al. Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is Rapidly Accumulating Plastic, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w, 2018 **The Ocean Cleanup, https://theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/, 2022 **Evers, J, Great Pacific Garbage Patch, National Geographic Society, https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/great-pacific-garbage-patch, 2022
Human nature seems to want to pass responsibility for ills. Let's do better. #poetry #ecology #pacificgarbagepatch #foundpoem #commons
