Channel Islands Group
December 7th 2009
English V01A
Our Oceans and Our Health
A frigid salty breeze blew through little Sarah’s pigtails, fluttering about behind her with velvet hair ribbons. The sand was still cool, her small feet sinking into the soft pliable surface as she held tight to the pale she had found in the street. Left behind by some other family, the beaten plastic bucket now served as a shoe carrier. Spinning like a top and giggling all the way, little Sarah was quickly halted by a sharp pain. Pulling her little foot up to examine it with tears in her eyes and a quivering lip, she discovers that a large shard of sharp plastic had sliced her soft heel.
Standing quickly to avoid the creeping roll of the tide she squinted with a frown at all of the litter that had been left behind. Instead of playing in the waves, she slowly picked up each piece of discarded trash placing it in the recycle container not five feet from where the rubbish lay. Arriving in a bit of disarray, the little girl’s mom had been stalled at the car gathering up her beach towels, sunglasses and radio. Watching her daughter she laughed softly, unaware of the harm that had befallen her. “Sarah you can’t clean the entire beach, so there is no use trying.”
Tossing the bottle into the can, Sarah turned to watch a small otter swirl about in the break attempting to remove a plastic bag that had been twisted over its head. Rushing over she pulled the bag loose, allowing the small wide eyed creature to dash back into the sea. Turning to her mother the little girl hugged her leg, “No mommy, I can’t clean it all but what I do clean helps.”
Humans are the only beings on this planet that create items that cannot be reclaimed by the environment. “Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere,” said Anthony Andrady, a chemist focusing on plastics in biological environments. We find plastic bags stuck to chain link fences, bottles in our beaches and forests and trash strewn about our neighborhoods. Making the problem we had left for future generations a problem that our generation must help clean up. With our habits being quite lazy, humans have created a problem that seems as if it is too big to tackle. With a trash piled up in massive landfills and strewn out across the oceans, picking up fifty years worth of plastic seems impossible. Yet as we can see, threw the eyes of Sarah every little bit helps.
Less than one percent of plastics produced will end up being recycled. The word recycle when it comes to plastic products is not what it seems. Plastics become what is known as Nurdle. A broken down form of a larger plastic that is small and pellet in appearance. Much like glass shards in the ocean, the constant battering of the material reduces the size of these pieces. Unlike like natural materials, nurdle never fully go away. Taking samples from the ocean waters off the coast of California, scientists have found that nurdle is ever prevalent in not only our waters but the foods we eat from the ocean. We are in effect eating the plastic bottles we thought were recycled. The US produces 60 billion pounds of this waste plastic a year. With 90 percent of the trash found on beaches being nurdle, was can easily see the effect it is having on our ecosystems.
Ventura is a unique place because it contains within its borders the United States own micro ecosystem. This system is more commonly called the Channel Islands. In the Channel Island National Park group, five members visited Santa Cruz Island part of the island chain and camped overnight. The group went on a five hour hike to explore and captured the scenic beauty of the Channel Islands. Each of the five members brought their own gear, equipment, and cameras to Santa Cruz Island. Bring everything and making sure to leave nothing behind, the group members were able to experience the Burning Man and DIY chapters of Nowtopia by Chris Carlsson. Luz’s observations of the islands were quite different than that of the rest of the group. Having never been camping or outside of her house for that matter she took the experience as an eye opening event. “Camping for the first time wasn’t so bad. For a person who doesn’t go out much and her typical day is stay home and watch television, camping was really exciting. Teamwork was necessary, and thankfully Angel and Cristina came to the rescue to help me out. For my first time going camping, I had fun and discovered a new life that I had no idea existed. I learned how to do things I never tried before, like put up a tent and how to make a camp shower. I just hope that we can keep the Channel Islands and our beaches clean for future generations.”
The islands, since the Spanish first set foot on them have been an echo of ecological information in regards to human manipulation. The effect of 5.4 million tons of waste dumped yearly into our oceans quickly effects this fragile environment. So it was very important that the Channel Islands group took care not to disturb this ecosystem. Sea animals have the hardest time with this heavy pollution, not only strangle themselves in waste, but swallow it as well. More and more fishermen are finding that fish have swallowed debris, making them ill and then transmitting sickness to other wildlife. This in turn affects humans who then consume these ill fish. Methyl mercury, being one of the most well known contaminates in our oceans. This chemical, builds up in fish usually predatory and then is consumed by humans. These unsafe levels can cause major health problems, and even death. A study by the Russian government noted that over sixty thousand premature deaths were related to ocean pollutions in what people were consuming per year. Chemical and plastic contamination has been affecting the Channel Islands over the years as well. DDT a widely used chemical in crop dusting was found to not only harm animal life but humans as well. On the Channel Islands, the effects of these crop dusting chemicals severely killed off the native bald eagle population. The Chemical, known for thinning shells of avians, drastically reduced the number of hatchings compared to live adults. Enrique made note of the harsh struggle endured by this hazardous cycle and in his journal entry.
“The endless ebb of the ocean as it ascends onto the shore of Santa Cruz, reminds me of the endless cycle of life. In and out as the tide moves, perfect in its cycle. Yet if you add in unforeseen variables into the equation, the waves that were once so pristine predictable and calm, becomes rapid and unpredictable. So what are these unforeseeable variables that I am talking about, well it could be anything. Perhaps a plastic bag that carried your cans of food home, only to end up slipping out of your recycle bin. Or that nice Styrofoam cup that held your vanilla café latte on that foggy Sunday morning that ended up falling out of your car.
Perhaps even a balloon, yes a simple red helium filled balloon that you see at countless birthday parties can cause destruction. They can fly loose and float into the Ventura bay only to have some creature mistake it for lunch. How can a cup, a plastic bag and a single red balloon do so much harm to such a huge island? The Channel Islands seem so far away, isolated off in the waters of the Pacific and seemingly free of our effects here. The answer however is frightfully simple, numbers. Millions of pounds of trash are scattered between the southern coast of California and the coasts of the Channel Islands every year. Santa Cruz being the biggest and the one with the most miles of coast it is the one being most devastated by this haphazard pollution.
One plastic bag, one Styrofoam cup and a balloon may not seem like a lot but add that to that countless trash articles that people lose track of everyday and it is quite feasible to see them ending up in the ocean and waterways. Trash is everywhere but we don’t seem to mind it. We just look the other way, but animals out in the channel and even here on the mainland are suffering from our neglect. To some fish, plastic bags look like nice delectable fish and to dolphins Styrofoam bits look really good to eat.
So as you may see from these examples, that as more and more trash is dumped into the sea more and more sea animals are using it as a food source. The food they had once consumed now gone because of the plastics. Eating plastic bags does not give the nutrition that these animals need, so the populations dwindle. With predators of these decreasing populations, like swordfish and sharks soon find themselves in the same cycle, consuming food that is ill or plastics to try and stay alive.
The wildlife on and around Santa Cruz Island is directly tied to the ocean and the ocean. When I went to Santa Cruz I saw this horrid cycle first hand. Pelicans could be seen diving for their food off of the cost of the island, but rarely did I see any of the pelicans eat any fish. Pelicans are built for scooping as much fish as possible, to feed not only themselves but their chicks as well. The reason the pelicans were coming away from the dives into the sea without anything was because there are less fish in the ocean to be caught. The trash killed off the vast groups of fish making it so that the pelicans can’t find any fish to eat. Without food they die needlessly, and those that hunt the birds for food like sharks and the island foxes are without another food source thus disrupting the food chain of Santa Cruz Island.”
Yet it is not just the Channel Islands that are affected by this disruption in the oceans. The harbors of the world are cluttered with debris, and the largest known dump is not on land. It is situated in the ocean between Hawaii and California, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Ocean currents bring garbage from all over the world swirl it in this location to gather. Unable to break down, the debris is a hazard to the ocean populations that live right below it. The Channel Islands group decided to try and take action in providing information and ideas how we can all help stop this destruction. Without intervention, the amount of contaminated sea life will rise and affect us as we eat them. It is however somewhat difficult to teach people to change habits, those use to having their Starbucks in a trendy plastic cup seem almost resilient against a change.
Taking the stance that education on how individuals can help reduce their plastic consumption seemed to be the best way to help explain how even a little girl can help save not only the oceans but herself as well. Placing information on our booth at Eco-fest, we had many people coming up asking questions about the images of animals we had displayed. A pelican, with a stomach full of plastic and two tons of garbage pulled from a whale’s stomach seemed to get the message across. People seem to respond to what they think might affect them. Explaining that the practice of using plastics was in effect poisoning humans as a whole, the Channel Islands group shocked a lot of the college students into awareness. Two individuals said they would stop buying plastic bottles out of the vending machines, and another vowed to halt using plastic bags. Both small changes, but as consumers we can change how things are done. We can always help reverse some of the damage if we stop adding to it.
Buying glass bottles instead of plastic can help reduce the amount of debris that ends up in landfills or water ways. Glass unlike plastic can break down and go back into the ecosystem. Glass, made of superheated sand is in a way made of beaches. Some people even go so far as to buy a metal drinking bottle. These can be reused over and over without having to be thrown away. With the average being 4 pounds of garbage per day per person, just reducing your plastic bottles can greatly lower the average. Changing out your plastic bags for a reusable canvas bag is another way to help reduce plastic intake. Most of the debris in the Pacific is plastic shopping bags. Recently a movement to help change this has started; many stores now offer reusable bags and even to educate people in the use of low plastic products.
Christina reflected how education and observation can help others understand, “Maybe it’s because we live quite literally, right next to the beach that Venturians tend to take the ocean for granted. We see the Channel Islands from a distance, but never really bother to learn about them or visit them. We don’t realize what a beautiful, diverse and unique ecosystem lives just a few miles from our shore. Or how that our over use of plastics has been hurting it and us. I’ve lived in Ventura my whole life and had never once thought twice about the islands I saw at a distance. It had never occurred to me that those islands might have something special about them. Warning us that what we do to the Earth can affect not only the Oceans but us as well. It’s like an early warning system to alert is to our bad behavior. I want more Venturian’s to go out the islands and experience the way it feels to stand over the cliffs of Santa Cruz and look at how blue the ocean is. I want them to know that their trash can end up in the ocean and ruin what is now a lovely and recovering ecosystem. They need to see for themselves the balloons and garbage that the crew on boat out to the Islands had to pick up. They were doing their part to help save the playful dolphins that visit the boats to tease and play with the passengers. With garbage in the way, they don’t want to come close.”
We as a society take for granted what we do not fully understand or see every day. Walking with our eyes in blinders, concerned about only what is affecting us as individuals. Rachel Carson, a marine biologist who helped start the global environmental movement stated, “The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery – not over nature but of ourselves.” If we as a society just changed some of our daily habits we could help reduce this corruption. Chris Carlson said it best in his book Nowtopia, “The active sharing of information and expertise has stimulated invention and innovation.” (167) Anyone can literally help save the world; all it takes is a little change and effort on everyone’s part. Be it working individually, or working together we can help change the mindset of our society. Our collective minds can help “stimulate” different ways we can help replace plastic with substances that are more eco friendly.
Tim Connan, a National Park ranger stated,“ Really, the best that we can do is try and clean up our act. Taking care to only use things we know we can recycle and try and cut down on plastic waste would really help the oceans. We pulls tons of garbage out of the bay and do stops when we see it floating on our runs, and I still see other people ( rangers) drnking out of plastic bottles. If people are wanting to change they will. Our collective health, and oceans I’m sure would thank us.”
