Dive Into Your Imagination

You are here :Home

Fishing for Plastic in the Garbage Patch

Wednesday, 07 October 2009

August 10^th 2009
Annie Crawley's Journal

The morning of August 10^th was quiet because the main science was the mantas. We were moving deeper into what we hoped would bring us an even higher accumulation of plastic. Although we were now entering the area of the ocean termed the garbage patch, I could not help but think of it more like plastic soup and plastic ocean. After a 24-hour breather, we went into another 24 hour intensive. This meant that for another 24 hours our time would be spent jam packed full of intensity with bongos, mantas, Oozeki and CTD deployments. Today was also the day we were going to explore the area with the small boat. After a few morning interviews, including one with Jesse, I prepped my cameras for the skiff ride. Shortly after lunch the small boat operations began.

Annie Crawley Chelsea Rochman New Horizon

Going out into the ocean aboard a small boat was a high and a low point. As a photographer and filmmaker specializing in being under water I was going a bit stir crazy being on deck and not allowed to enter below the surface. I had been surrounded by more than a thousand miles of Ocean in every direction and was trapped to the deck of a vessel. I was looking forward to getting into the skiff so we could snorkel and see what did the plastic really look liked underwater. We had been granted permission by Scripps Institution of Oceanography to skin dive while in the North Pacific Gyre, but now that we were out to sea we have been told it is only allowed by the Captain�s discretion.

So here I am with all of my underwater equipment, ready to see what exists just below the surface and the Captain has told us we cannot go snorkeling. When asked why we were told it was because they were afraid we might be bitten by a shark and we are too far away from anywhere in case of an emergency. I really could not believe my ears and was completely shocked by this. With nearly 20 years of experience as a dive instructor and underwater expert I have been diving with sharks hundreds of times and have never been in a place of danger even when diving with New Horizon Dipnet Plastic in the garbage patch

New Horizon Dipnet Plastic in the garbage patch

Great White Sharks and here we were drifting in the middle of nowhere and the most dangerous things we were seeing was a slick of plastic created by man and I was being told I could not go in the water. Ugh!

When on a ship, there is no democracy, there is only dictatorship and what the Captain says, goes. Captain Wes said no to entering the water, so no it was and there is no argument. This was torture for me! I had to let it go though, I knew this because everything on this expedition was so important that snorkeling was only one part of it. As a Captain myself, even though I did not agree with Captain Wes, I knew there was no point in arguing. Sometimes you merely have to accept another person�s decision and make the best of it. So the next thing I knew Chelsea, Mat, Doug and I

were leaving the mother ship and going off to see what we could collect. Chelsea wanted to collect salps, but as we drove around, we found ourselves dip netting plastic water bottles, buoys and other objects floating in the sea. It was really quite extraordinary to be off of the New Horizon zipping around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Josh and Andrew, the marine bird and mammal specialists turned visual observation plastic specialists were guiding us to large pieces of marine debris via radio contact. The entire experience was surreal. Here we were in the middle of the Pacific Ocean netting plastic to take back to a lab to process.

And all I wanted to do was jump into the deep sea. The weather was perfect and memories of drifting in blue water dives were haunting me as I was not allowed below the surface. What was lurking below? An island of plastic? Nothing? Only time would tell!