Mermaid's tears.

Have you ever heard of them? I hadn't, until I read the paper (the Saturday Times) yesterday. Mermaid's tears- they sound kind of romantic, don't they? But sadly, they're not romantic at all. They are, in fact, deadly fragments of plastic.





They result from discarded plastic (bottle caps, plastic bags, containers) which ends up in the sea. The sunlight and waves break the plastic down into small chips, or mermaid's tears, and these fragments act as sponges for heavy metals and pollutants. Small fish mistake them for food and eat them, and then the toxins are in the food chain, affecting larger fish, birds and marine mammals, and ultimately, us.





It might sound like an insignificant business; after all, the oceans are vast and the chips are tiny. But oceanographers who are studying the problem have discovered that the chips outnumber plankton by six to one.





And that's not all. The chips are part of a larger and even more sinister problem. The bigger pieces of plastic waste have been swept into an accumulation, like some vast marine garbage dump, by a slowly circulating ring of currents, known as an oceanic gyre. One of these 'dumps', which spins sedately on it's own axis in the Northeastern Pacific, contains least six million tons of rubbish and is twice the size of Texas. It was discovered in 1997, by oceanographer and yachtsman Charles Moore. He is quoted in the Times as saying: " As I gazed from the deck over the surface of what should have been pristine ocean surface I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, by the sight of plastic." It's so big, it took him a week to sail through it. And apparently, the same oceanic conditions that caused this 'dump' to form also exist in the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean and the North and South Atlantic. But no-one's investigated yet.





Next month Project Kaisei will set out from San Francisco to find ways of clearing this mess in the Pacific. Project Kaisei consists of a crew of 30 on research vessels, and is supported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brita, the water company. Cleaning up is not going to be easy. Apart from the headache of persuading the international community to co-operate, it's just physically difficult to do. Ordinary nets used to scoop up trash would also kill wildlife. And it would be hugely expensive. So, using specialised nets which should minimise the catch of sea life, the aim of the project is to see if the recovered plastic can be recycled into fuel. They're going to start with 40 tonnes of trash.





But they can't recover the mermaid's tears. They are too small. They are there to stay.



So what can we do, how can we help? It is thought that 80% of the debris in the North Pacific gyre is swept out from land, specifically the Pacific West Coast of America and the East coast of Asia. The remaining 20% comes from ships that lose their cargo. So disposing of our rubbish carefully is important.

But even if we use the recycling bins, there is no guarantee about what happens to it next. The credit crunch has brought many plastic recycling programmes in the UK to a halt. According to what I've read, some councils here in Britain end up sending it all to landfill along with the unrecyclable refuse; other councils are apparently stockpiling it in warehouses. And sometimes it's shipped to poorer countries, who are paid to take it.



Inevitably, some of it ends up in the sea.



The answer has to be that we all use less plastic. For example, worldwide, apparently we use an estimated 85 million plastic bottles every 3 minutes. That's a huge figure. It sounds almost scandalously irresponsible that we should use so many. But I have to put my hand up here and admit to using 7 bottles a week. I had never thought about it before but now I have, and I'm shocked to realise that's 364 bottles a year. I have previously justified my consumption because I drink at least 1.5 litres of water a day and I really don't like the taste of the water that comes out of my tap. But you know what? I bet the fish are not too partial to the taste of those mermaid's tears either. The fish don't have a choice, but I do. I've bought myself a Brita water filter and I'll be using that from now on.



And if you've read some of my previous posts on here (The Dirty Word) you'll know I like to clean the beach. I'll be doing that with increased enthusiasm. It's not much, but it's what I can do. Since I began cleaning the beach, I have been amazed at the amount of rubbish I find, and most of it has been washed up by the tide. Now I understand why there is so much. What I find on the beach is like the proverbial 'tip of the iceberg'.

I wrote this post because what I read in the paper yesterday genuinely shocked and horrified me.

If you have any ideas on other ways to help, or just thoughts on the subject, please post a comment.





All the information in this post is taken from an article 'Mission to net island of plastic flotsam twice the size of Texas' by Frank Pope, Ocean Correspondent; 'Rubbish trapped in a spin cycle' by Emily Gosden; and in the lead article of the Editorial, all in the Saturday Times, may2, 2009. If you would like to read the whole story (and believe me, it's worth it) you should be able to find it at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

And here's the website for Project Kaisei www.projectkaisei.org