Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Stiv & 5Gyres Update: 22Feb2010 - Sargasso Sea & the Azores!


The latest from Stiv Wilson & 5 Gyres' trip to the Atlantic Ocean, to see if the "garbage patch" phenom is only specific to the Pacific Ocean. The early diagnosis: not only "NO!", but "H-E-[double-hockey sticks] NO, it's NOT just in the Pacific!!" - the stuff is everywhere.

The team has come up from the Bahamas, crossed the Sargasso sea, and is now visiting the central Atlantic's Azores Islands ('Açores' if you are conversant in Portuguese)... Here is Stiv's latest posting to us:

"Hey Oceansavas:

Lots more to come from my journey to the North Atlantic Gyre. Absolutely mindblowing experience. Seeing this stuff firsthand, in a liquid wilderness, and finding that it's ubiquitous is a tough pill to swallow. We did 37 trawls for plastic fragments. Each positive. BLECK. Then the patches of crap....fish living in buckets...living in pipes...transparent jellyfish with plastic flecs inside...lighters, shotgun shells...bleach bottles with fish teeth marks...milk crates.......it's all there.
"

Links:

Reports/videos published in Wend magazine.


5Gyres stories, photos and other pithy info.


Stay tuned for more!