In the 1967 movie The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman's character, Benjamin, is told by his future fatherinlaw: "There's a great future in plastics."
I When it comes to the ocean, and all those organisms that live in it and depend on it, including humans, that line might well be: "There's a grim future in plastics."
When millions of tonnes of debris was swept into the ocean by the March 2011 tsunami that hit Japan, concerns began growing about what would happen when the debris reached the North American coast.
While the bulk of the material is expected to arrive here in 2014, it has already begun - a container containing a motorcycle that washed up on a Haida Gwaii beach, Japanese debris found at Tofino, the massive pier that grounded on Oregon's Agate Beach. Governments and groups are working on plans to clear the wreckage from beaches and cope with possible contamination.
The concerns are understandable - the images from the tsunami are unforgettable as homes, cars, factories and commercial buildings were pulverized by the relentless water and swept out to sea. One can't help but wonder what about the effects of all that material floating in the ocean and washing up on distant shores.
Yet the biggest contamination problem in the Pacific Ocean existed long before the 2011 tsunami. It's summed up in that word from The Graduate: "Plastics."
Mary Crowley, founder of the Ocean Voyages Institute, a U.S.-based environmental group, says the tsunami debris poses a significant risk to the ocean, but it pales in comparison with the vast amount of debris already floating in the ocean. Most of that debris is plastic and most of it comes from this side of the Pacific.
We've seen many photos of fish, sea birds and sea mammals tangled up in nets and other plastic debris, and that certainly is a problem. Creatures mistake bits of plastic for food and ingest them. It has been estimated that more than one million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement.
But more troubling is the fact that the plastic continues to break down into smaller and smaller particles, but never decomposes. These suspended particles become so small, they are ingested by aquatic organisms and enter the food chain, adding dangerous chemicals to the diets of animals and humans.
The plastic particles, some down to the molecular level, also disrupt growth and reproduction of aquatic fauna.
The plastic, small pieces and large, have been caught up in a vortex of ocean currents called a gyre and have formed the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," an area believed to be about the size of Texas between California and Hawaii. A similar situation exists in the Atlantic Ocean.
While we cannot see this ugly soup, we should be aware of it - it will inevitably affect us all.
Crowley has called for an international effort to clean up the oceans. It's a Herculean task - how do you strain bits of plastic on the molecular level from sea water? - but it needs to be done.
Equally important, we should all work to keep plastic from getting into the ocean in the first place. Few places have as much ocean exposure as the Greater Victoria region - Vancouver Island's coastline is 3,400 kilometres long - so opportunities abound to toss trash into the ocean. It might seem harmless to toss one small container into the vast ocean, but the cumulative effect is frightening.
Although the scope of the problem is huge, we shouldn't minimize individual efforts with a "too little, too late" philosophy. We should strive to reduce our use of plastics and increase recycling.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch doesn't affect the wonderful ocean views so plentiful around Vancouver Island, but while we can't see it, we cannot be spared its deleterious effects.
The bright future in plastics envisioned by that 1967 movie character might well, in hindsight, be a gloomy prophecy if we don't turn things around.
