Kip Hansen’s guest essay – May 22, 2022
There was an interesting preprint issue, and it received a rather odd reception in the science section of the New York Times.
The article is “High concentrations of floating life in the North Pacific Garbage” by Fiona Chong, Matthew Spencer, Nikolai Maximenko, Jan Hafner, Andrew McWhirter and Rebecca R. Helm. The Summary is available here and a The full text of the .pdf file can be found here.
I chatted with Rebecca Helm via email. She’s happy the newspaper has received any publicity, but a little perplexed that it’s almost completely misunderstood. The article doesn’t talk about garbage, floating plastic (soaptop resin), or the Pacific Garbage Patch is almost a fantasy.
A brief note on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: To quote NOAA:” The name “Pacific Garbage” leads many to believe that the area is a large and continuous dump of visible marine debris such as bottles and other garbage — like a garbage island in the sense of the word. Black can be seen by satellite or airplane images. This is not the case. While a higher density of waste can be found in this area, most of the debris is actually small floating pieces of plastic that are not immediately visible to the naked eye.” And here.
The image used in the NY Times was taken by Ben Lecomte, who started swimming in the Pacific Ocean, right through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). It is a typical ball of abandoned or lost fishing net and line rolled into a block in a similar manner, where dust rabbit formed under your bed. This net mass was not found as Locomte swam across the Pacific Ocean – at least it is not mentioned or pictured on his pages about Pacific expeditions. Image used by the New York Times not on Lecomte’s website, but from a different time and place. Lecomte’s website is here. The website has an image that looks like a staged painting of Lecomte in soapstone. It took a few minutes to realize that Lecomte’s website only contained four images of any real soapstone. Means? Either they didn’t find much during the full GPGP swim, or contrary to the stated purpose of the expedition, they chose not to take or display pictures of their findings.
Why even mention Lecomte then? Our author says “To test our hypothesis that the patches of debris could also be neuston seas, including NPGP, we conducted a public science survey through NPGP with the fleet of sailboats accompanying the athletes. Long distance swimmer Benoît Lecomte (https://benlecomte.com/) as he swims through the NPGP (The Vortex Swim). ” [Note: the eastern North Pacific Subtropical Gyre in the area of the North Pacific “garbage patch” (NPGP).]
The authors of this paper are not looking for floating plastic, but floating life form collectively referred to as “neuston sea“. Here’s what they found:
The image on the top left is “Sailor man horizontal and vertical” [Velella]. Pictured on the left are blown dry sails that I found on the beach in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Author’s Status”We hypothesize that floating life is also centered in gyros other than converging surface currents. “The floating life is known to be concentrated in the Atlantic Ocean in the gyros that make it famous Sea of Sargasso in the subtropical North Atlantic. The authors speculate that the same may or may not be true in the eastern North Pacific subtropical Gyre in the North Pacific “landfill” (NPGP) region. Ben Lecomte organized an “expedition” by swimming across the Great Pacific Garbage… giving the authors an opportunity to do a little bit of citizen science.
The fleet of sailing ships accompanied by Lecomte towed.”One Manta trawl (width x height: 0.9 m x 0.15 m) [mouth size about 3 feet by 6 inches] or neuston mesh (width x height: 1 m x 0.25 m) [ mouth size about 3 feet by 10 inches] was towed along the sea surface for 30 min at each site with a General Ocean Mechanical Flowmeter (model 2030R) to measure the approximate amount of water filtered by the trawl”.
The results are interesting. The limited data the project has gathered suggests that, yes, neustons are being concentrated in the eastern Pacific gyroscope in exactly the same way that floating pieces of plastic are being concentrated. Here are the types they found in their towing nets:
They found the neuston they were looking for, along with lots of other living things, and fragments of non-living things: wood, stone, rope, and plastic. Wood, rope (probably polypropylene, floating) and plastic are expected… .but not stone.
The highest number of both neuston and resin bits found in a single sample taken in a spill: “In our study, the patchy distribution of neustons and resins on the surface can be attributed to sub-mesoscale. Surface dynamics like slicesand may be important to predation and reproduction of neutrons. We found the highest concentrations of both neustons and resins in a spill (SJR_019), and this holds true for other studies as well. ”
Most of the visible matter is floating life, neutrons. There is a bit of plastic cord in Table b and some clear plastic chips. One pitfall of the study for which Dr Helm apologizes is that the photographs of the trawl samples do not have gauges or scales that allow us to judge size. The paper itself does not have a detailed table of the number of subjects, nor the supplement. In Figure 4a, we see that the density of neutrons and plastic bits per meter2 very nice alignment.
Conclude:
A nice little work that supports the original hypothesis that the gyros in the Pacific Ocean should concentrate all floating objects, not just plastic, but especially life forms collectively known as neutrons: “Neuston and plastic both seem to be condensed by similar physics forces. Surface features such as a cut that is much more neuston-focused, may be important for the life history of neustons, and we found evidence that neustonic animals are breeding in NPGP.”
# # # # #
Author’s comment:
This is an example of a good effort by researchers getting recognition – but for the wrong reasons. I assume the NY Times covered it up because it reads “Garbage Patch,” not because it’s an interesting hypothesis confirmed by a neat bit of research.
Dr. Rebecca Helm was nice enough to answer my question and send me the additional file.
I admit to having a longstanding fascination with “Fantastic Sailors” – small jellyfish-like animal, a hydrozoa, with their slightly stiff sails causing the wind to push them over the surface of the sea. I have only spent half of my life at sea, while they spend their whole life sailing… .. However, I have never seen a sailor live like the wind on the high seas even though he has traveled thousands of miles less than four feet. on the surface of the ocean, only those that died on the shore.
I have seen many strange creatures feeding on the surface of the sea, especially at night, and have also seen things that eat them, including rare species. Bigger Bulldog Bat (or Fisherman).
For stone. . . . . Early in our Caribbean adventure I found a rugby ball about the shape and size of a floating pumice, rounded by washing and walking on the beaches we traveled, and, wrapped in a rope net, used as buoys to mark the occasion. It was returned to sea, in the middle of Gulf Stream, engraved with the name and date of our boat for the first time, on our last voyage home. If you find it, let me know.
Thanks for reading.
# # # # #
Related
