A Tale of a Plastic Ship

"There’s a six-to-one ratio of plastic to plankton in certain areas like the gyres—there’s one off the coast of Japan, Antaractica, South Africa, and so on. Anywhere in our oceans where there’s a naturally forming gyre, you see a high concentration of plastics. There’s roughly 100 million tons of plastic in our oceans, which is shocking. The important point to convey is that it’s one body of water with huge concentrations of plastic across the entire oceans, not just in one area. It gets worse that chemicals flowing into our oceans are attracted to and absorbed by the plastic, which is ingested by the filter-feeders, the little guys who make it back into the food supply and back into you and me. When you start to see mothers not being able to breast-feed their children because of flame retardants in their breast milk, that’s a huge health issue. The gyre is not just about the marine mammals, it’s about us. And it’s tough to connect those things and communicate that we’re ultimately responsible and that we should care."

Read the whole interview