Richie's Picks: TRACKING TRASH: FLOTSAM, JETSAM, AND THE SCIENCE OF OCEAN
MOTION by Loree Griffin Burns (Scientists in the Field series), Houghton
Mifflin, 2007, 58p. ISBN: 0-618-58131-6
"Mr. Thompson calls the waiter, orders steak and baked potater
But he leaves the bone & gristle & he never eats the skins.
Then the bus boy comes & takes it, with a cough contaminates it
As he puts it in a can with coffee grounds & sardine tins.
Then the truck comes by on Friday & carts it all away
And a thousand trucks just like it are converging on the bay."
Perhaps the dumping of garbage into the bay is not quite as blatant today as
it was back in 1969 when Bill Steele wrote his eco-ditty, "Garbage," but it
seems that today's never-ending flow of plastic garbage into the oceans is of
more dire and destructive consequence to the oceans' long-term survival
than anything they've previously faced. This is one of the conclusions to be
drawn from the fascinating and important TRACKING TRASH: FLOTSAM, JETSAM, AND
THE SCIENCE OF OCEAN MOTION.
Who knew that beachcombers kept meticulous logs of their finds or that they
actually held conventions? Dr. Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who began
his widely-publicized work with ocean currents and tracking trash when his
mom asked him to figure out why hundreds of sneakers had begun washing up on
beaches near Seattle, has uncovered significant clues through his ongoing
communications with beachcombers. We learn in TRACKING TRASH that there are
slight changes year to year in the oceans' currents and that projections of
those current flows is now a well-refined science whose origins harken back to
scientific work by Benjamin Franklin.
The first part of TRACKING TRASH is especially entertaining to read. Huge
cargo containers periodically fall from enormous cargo ships in big storms.
The cargo gets loose and takes off with the currents. Many readers will be
amused by the thought of eighty thousand Nike sneakers drifting eastward in the
currents, of twenty-nine thousand rubber duckies and froggies bobbing
merrily along, or of five million LEGO pieces breaking loose in the middle of the
Atlantic. But the incidents of lost cargo are a drop in the bucket; they're
less than one-fifth of the problem. The remainder, the more serious story,
is of large quantities of garbage -- so much of it plastic-based -- getting
flushed out of rivers and bays into the sea.
Having fond memories of creating "whirlpools" with friends in little
backyard swimming pools, it is not surprising to learn that when a stream of
indestructible plastic garbage is continually dumped into the ocean, it will
eventually come together in a big bobbing mass surrounded by circulating currents.
What is impressive (or, more likely, alarming and depressing) is that a
so-called Garbage Patch in the Pacific is now as big as the state of Alaska and
estimated to be composed of the accumulation of six BILLION pounds of plastic
this, plastic that, and plastic everything else.
"What happens to this plastic trash during the decades it floats around the
Garbage Patch? Not much, because plastic is one of the most indestructible
materials on the planet. This is one of the reasons we find it so useful.
Plastic is found in everything, from the toys we play with to the plates we eat
from, the cars we drive, and even the clothes we wear.
"Unfortunately, the very property that makes plastic a useful material for
all these items makes it virtually impossible to get rid of. There is no
organism anywhere on the planet that can digest plastic. A long exposure to
sunshine, wind,, and waves will eventually break plastic objects into smaller and
smaller pieces of plastic, but those small pieces are still made entirely of
indestructible, indigestible plastic.
And when birds and marine mammals get mixed up with all of this plastic they
die.
"Bottle caps and disposable lighters are seen in the carcasses of sea birds
found on beaches from Hawaii to Washington. Apparently the birds are
mistaking floating plastic for food. Many of these birds die of starvation
because
the plastic filling their stomachs can be neither digested nor excreted.
Discarded fishing nets and other fishing gear can tangle and drown fish, sea
turtles, seals, and other animals. Experts now estimate that the number of
marine mammals in the Pacific Ocean that die each year due to plastic ingestion
and net entanglement approaches 100,000."
This particular passage in the well-illustrated book is accentuated with a
photo of a dead, rotting bird complete with the fifty-nine plastic pieces that
were stuck in its gut.
The immediate solution? Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. If plastic bags are so
indestructible, then I shouldn't take one unless I'm going to reuse it numerous
times and then recycle it. Long term, there is no question that big changes
must be made in terms of manufacturing and consuming so much petroleum-based
plastic stuff.
"There's nothing left to watch & there's nothing left to touch
There's nothing left to walk upon & nothing left to talk upon
And nothing left to see & nothing left to be but Garbage!"
As with other books I've read in the Scientists in the Field series,
TRACKING TRASH reveals the profiled scientists to be pretty cool people with
extremely interesting jobs. It'll definitely inspire interest by readers in
science.
Richie Partington, MLIS
Richie's Picks http://richiespicks.com
Moderator, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/middle_school_lit/
BudNotBuddy@aol.com
http://www.myspace.com/richiespicks
Caldecott '09
**************Biggest Grammy Award surprises of all time on AOL Music.
(http://music.aol.com/grammys/pictures/never-won-a-grammy?NCID=aolcmp003000000025
48)
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