Aquarium staff recently returned from an expedition to the Bahamas. They'll be sharing pictures and stories from their time exploring the turquoise blue waters of Caribbean—complete with pictures, video, conservation notes and a taste of life on board a working boat. 

This post about a invasive species and marine debris comes to us from Austin, who normally cares for the shorebirds on Central Wharf.

Although all of the sites we dove on the trip were beautiful and had a diversity of fish and invertebrate inhabitants, we were still reminded daily of the negative impacts that humans can have on the ocean ecosystem. On nearly every dive we saw several lionfish. Lionfish are native to the Indo Pacific but were introduced to the US Atlantic coast in the 1980s, when home aquarium owners released them into the ocean.

Lionfish lurking

Now lionfish range from North Carolina to South America and have spread throughout the Caribbean in less than five years. Their venomous spines deter would-be predators and they have been documented to consume over 70 species of native fishes, threatening the population levels of these native fishes and the diversity of the reef. There are current efforts to research the spread of lionfish, and to encourage people to eat them in order to reduce their numbers.  Lionfish is a delicacy (only the spines contain venom and these can be easily removed).  We were lucky to try some lion fish ceviche on the trip!  You can find out more about invasive lionfish here.

Lionfish ceviche

We also observed a large amount of plastic pollution on the beaches where we went ashore, even on the uninhabited island of South Cat Key where we seined for needlefish.



Plastic debris in the ocean is a huge problem of which more and more people are becoming aware. Not only is it unsightly but it can be ingested by marine animals (this is a major threat to the health of some sea birds like albatross) or entangle them.

Plastic debris, even on uninhabited islands in the Caribbean

Many plastics that end up in the ocean seem to disappear over time but in fact are still present as tiny particles. The effect of these particles on the food web after they are initially ingested by plankton remains unknown.

Learn about plastics in our oceans:

• Watch a recorded lecture about marine debris clean-up in Boston Harbor and the Gulf of Maine in this Aquarium Lecture Series talk by Rachel Miller.
• Follow an Aquarium educator on an expedition to the giant Pacific Garbage Patch.
• See what divers found on a pristine reef in Indonesia (you guessed it, plastics!)

Kim McCabe is a Visitor Education Specialist at the New England Aquarium. She recently returned from an expedition in the North Pacific ocean studying plastic debris and its impact on the marine ecosystem. She'll be sharing some of her observations and reactions through the coming over the coming days.



From my last post you know that 95 percent of the pieces we found were smaller than your pinky nail.  But we also took notice of debris that was visible to the naked eye from the deck of our ship. We spent ten minutes of every daylight hour specifically scanning the waters for debris and carefully logging flotsam we spotted. Determining the definite origin of most of these objects is difficult or impossible.  Often it is just pieces of plastic or foam, huge swaths of fishing nets and tangled lines, fishing buoys with no definitive markings, and plastic bottles with no labels. Given our cruise track there is a possibility that some of this debris could be from the Japanese tsunami.

One of the first large pieces we found was a red round plastic fishing buoy stamped with Japanese characters. We sent a photo of the characters out for translation and found out that the buoy originated in a southern sub-region of Hokkaido. Besides fishing buoys we saw other small items like a capped plastic beverage bottle, a soccer ball, and a childs rubber ball.

A refrigerator found in the middle of the Pacific could be tsunami debris from Japan

Possibly our most startling find of the trip was an intact refrigerator floating in the middle of the ocean. We did not have the space or means to take it onboard but we were able to open a drawer and extract various packaged foods and wrappers labeled with Japanese characters. My personal favorite piece of flotsam was a “rare” glass fishing floats—we found two! These beautiful round glass balls were traditionally used to float fishing nets in Japan before plastic came along.

Items from a drawer of the fridge have Japanese characters

Finding “treasures” out at sea such as the items listed here can be thrilling, the excitement onboard is palpable when we spot something, change course, and attempt retrieval. The strange part is that it becomes a bittersweet moment because the floating debris has a history—potentially of devastation.

Kim McCabe is a Visitor Education Specialist at the New England Aquarium. She recently returned from an expedition in the North Pacific ocean studying plastic debris and its impact on the marine ecosystem. She'll be sharing some of her observations and reactions through the coming over the coming days.



Astonishingly, every single tow we did within the North Pacific Gyre contained plastic. Plastic was found not only floating at the surface, but mixed by wind and wave down to depths of 30 feet. We now know that surface tows do not give us a complete picture of what is out there.

Just how much did we find? From out neuston, manta and MOCNESS tows we counted 66,077 pieces of plastic. From visual surveys we counted 2796 pieces of plastic. In total that’s 68,873 plastic pieces!

Counting plastic debris from a sampling

It’s hard to imagine what this number actually looks like out in the ocean. Let me tell you that is a LOT of plastic, and 95% of it is smaller than your pinky nail. That means there is no floating island of trash out there, and it is certainly not visible from space as some internet searches might lead you to believe.  In reality, the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch is a large area of plastic soup, seasoned liberally with tiny floating plastic bits and the occational larger dumpling, like a buoy or a capped bottle.

Much of the plastic particles are tiny, the size of your pinky nail

Why is this plastic so small? Just like we get a sunburn if we stay in the sun too long with no sunscreen, plastic gets sun damage, causing it to photodegrade, or break into smaller pieces. As plastic gets smaller, it becomes ingestible on every level of the food web, from zooplankton to albatross to whales and yes, even to us.  These plastic bits are known to leach and concentrate toxins. If these toxins accumulate in our food, they accumulate in us. Medical professionals are beginning to question whether the abundance of chemicals in the environment could be linked to rising occurances of diabetes, obeisity, autism and ADHD. Even though these plastic pieces are in one of the most remote places on the planet, they could be affecting our health.

Larger hunks of plastic often have hitchhikers

In my next post, I'll talk about some of those larger items of trash that we spotted—some could even have come from the Japanese tsunami. Stick around.

Learn more about Kim's expedition to study Plastics in the Pacific.
How do you study plastics in the ocean?
Why is there plastic in the ocean?
A quick recap of the trip
A firsthand look at the Giant Pacific Garbage Patch
 
Plastics in the ocean has been covered on Aquarium blogs several times, unfortunately. Learn about finding plastic debris on remote Indonesian reefs, in the open waters around Costa Rica, around islands in the Bahamas and learn how some people in Dominica are learning to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Kim McCabe is a Visitor Education Specialist at the New England Aquarium. She recently returned from an expedition in the North Pacific ocean studying plastic debris and its impact on the marine ecosystem. She'll be sharing some of her observations and reactions through the coming over the coming days.


We did four to six tows a everyday within the gyre to look for plastics. The Robert C. Seamans was equipped with a variety of nets that were used for our sampling.

1: Neuston Net
Traditionally used to sample plankton this net is towed on the surface of the water. Its fine mesh net lets water pass through while collecting plankton and everything else into the plastic container at it’s tapered “cod end”. Since in the middle of the ocean we are only going to find plastic that floats, this net is a great way to collect gyre samples.

Skimming the surface of the Pacific Ocean with the neuston net

A closeup of the neuston net

2. Dip Net
Long handles dip nets allowed us to scoop up visible pieces of debris, such as buoys, fragments of styrofoam and a soccer ball.

Dip nets are used to recover visible pieces of debris

3. The MOCNESS (Multiple Opening and Closing Net with Environmental Sensing System)
This beast-of-a-net weighed over 100 pounds, and had to be lowered over the side using a hydraulic J frame and our wire winch capable of lowering research equipment down to 3000 meters. This net could be programmed to open and close nets at different depths so we could see if plastic was being forced downward in the water column by the mixing effect of the wind.

Plastics in the ocean has been covered on Aquarium blogs several times, unfortunately. Learn about finding plastic debris on remote Indonesian reefs, in the open waters around Costa Rica, around islands in the Bahamas and learn how some people in Dominica are learning to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Kim McCabe is a Visitor Education Specialist at the New England Aquarium. She recently returned from an expedition in the North Pacific ocean studying plastic debris and its impact on the marine ecosystem. She'll be sharing some of her observations and reactions through the coming over the coming days.

Let's start out by closing your eyes and trying to imagine a world without plastic.

Having trouble? It’s hard. The stuff is everywhere! How would we brush our teeth, store our food or use the internet without plastic? Yet, plastics are relatively new to human culture. Talk to your grandparents and they can tell you about a world with milkmen, glass bottles and food wrapped in wax paper. The smorgasbord of cheap plastic goods we find around us today, from toys to bags and bottles, are the products of “throw away living”, the ideal of disposability that didn’t pop up until the 1950s.  Now, Americans go through two million plastic soda bottles every five minutes! The amount of waste we create is staggering. So where does it all go?

Plastic debris recovered from the Pacific Ocean

Every piece of plastic we have ever made is still with us today. Some, inevitably, ends up in the ocean.  When it does it usually congregates in one of the five major gyres, or rotating ocean currents. As coastal and equatorial currents rotate around these gyres the middle, like the eye of a storm, remains calm. Once plastic gets there, it doesn’t leave.

We think that the majority of ocean plastic comes from land. Any walk through Boston will tell you that our waste disposal system is not perfect. Trash barrels overflow, bottles lay discarded on curbs, and plastic bags blow like tumbleweeds through the streets. This plastic works its way into storm drains and rivers, which all lead to the sea. Other sources include offshore activities (military, fishing, drilling, etc.) and natural disasters (tsunamis, hurricanes, etc.). In addition, it was completely legal to dump plastic in the ocean until 1988!

Our expedition headed to the middle of the North Pacific Gyre to take a closer look at this mid-ocean plastic. Coming up, how do you look for plastics in the middle of the ocean?

Plastics in the ocean has been covered on Aquarium blogs several times, unfortunately. Learn about finding plastic debris on remote Indonesian reefs, in the open waters around Costa Rica, around islands in the Bahamas and learn how some people in Dominica are learning to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Kim McCabe is a Visitor Education Specialist at the New England Aquarium. She recently returned from an expedition in the North Pacific ocean studying plastic debris and its impact on the marine ecosystem. 

Read blog entries from this expedition on the Plastics At Sea: North Pacific Expedition website. Kim's reactions to follow, stay tuned. Below are some quick figures about the expedition.





The expedition has concluded. Here's a quick summary of the researchers encountered along the way from San Diego to Honolulu:

• Number of plastic pieces counted: 69,566
• Number of net tows: 118
• Distance traveled: 2597 nautical miles
• Fuel consumed: 2885 gallons
• Fuel remaining: 3010 gallons
• Days at sea: 36
• Position: Honolulu, HI

The Robert C Seamans, Photo: Jon Waterman via

And more about those plastics from the researchers on board the Robert C. Seamans:

• Hand counted 66,077 pieces of plastic from 118 plankton net tows
• Logged 3,489 pieces of large “macrodebris” from visual surveys
• 95 percent of the plastic collected was millimeters in size
• Plastic was collected in every net tow within the North Pacific subtropical gyre
• Every subsurface net tow contained plastic
• All plastic collected had living organisms on it
• Each net tow also contained plankton
• Plastic counts from net tows ranged from 9 to 24,213 in the gyre

Hand-counting plastics. Photo: Jon Waterman via

The scientists will process all this data back on land, and it's a lot of information to digest. If you're interested in learning more about plastics in our oceans, check out this New England Aquarium lecture, peruse this blog about plastics around us and learn about nurdles on Caribbean beaches. And stay tuned, Kim will return with her reflections on her experience at sea.

Kim is all smiles during the expedition. Photo: Jon Waterman via

Kim McCabe is a Visitor Education Specialist at the New England Aquarium. She is currently onexpedition in the mid-Pacific ocean studying plastic debris and its impact on the marine ecosystem. This is her introductory post as she heads out on expedition. Real time updates from this expedition will be posted on the Plastics At Sea: North Pacific Expedition website.




Take a look around you... Most of what we eat, drink and use is made of or packaged in plastic. This versatile, durable and inexpensive material has become an important part of our daily lives. Unfortunately, because of their over-use, improper disposal and slow degradation, plastics have also become a ubiquitous presence in the world’s oceans. [As previously reported in Aquarium blog entries from Fiji, the Bahamas and Indonesia.]

A piece of plastic floating through a coral reef in Raja Ampat, Indonesia (photo: Greg Stone) Originally posted in this entry.

So is there really an island of trash--twice as big as Texas!--floating in the mid-Pacific gyre? Well... Turns out the term “garbage patch” is very misleading. A majority of the floating debris is smaller than your pinky nail and therefore can’t be seen from the deck of a moving ship [This post describes those small pieces of plastic as nurdles].

But just because the plastic pieces are small doesn’t mean it’s not a HUGE problem! What happens when marine life, from plankton to seabirds and whales, ingest these indigestible plastic morsels? How can we clean up our mess when it has incorporated itself into the planktonic community?

Currently, the extent of plastic debris in the oceans is poorly defined and more rigorous research is needed to define the scope of the problem, engage the public in conversation, and influence policy to find long-term solutions.

The RV Robert C. Seamans

This fall, I am joining a team of scientists, sailors, and concerned citizens on a research expedition into the “Giant Pacific Garbage Patch” to tackle tough questions about the impact of this long lived pollutant. We will spend 39 days sailing the Robert C. Seamans from San Diego to Honolulu collecting samples to determine not only how much plastic is polluting the Pacific, but also how it impacts marine life.

What are our objectives?

• Estimate total plastic concentrations in the upper ocean using subsurface samples along with numerical modeling.
• Investigate the community of microorganisms inhabiting the plastic debris (known as the “Plastisphere”).
• Determine whether floating plastic acts as a vector for potentially invasive or pathogenic species to spread to new areas.
• Survey for Japanese tsunami debris and predict its arrival on US shorelines.

Through these entries and outreach programs we will ensure that the outcomes of this expedition reach far beyond the deck of our ship!

Want to know more? Or are you just curious about what it’s like to live aboard a 135 foot sailing research vessel for 39 days without TV, internet or even a glimpse of land? Well, it turns out that bandwidth from the mid-Pacific ocean is limited and expensive, so I will not be posting from the boat, but I will be posting details here after I return.

In the meantime, John Waterman, journalist for National Geographic, and other crew members will be blogging thoughts, pictures, and videos throughout the expedition. I encourage you all to follow our voyage at the Plastics At Sea: North Pacific Expedition website.

Bon Voyage!
Kim McCabe