September 2012
Cleanup Teams Guided by CODAR Data
HF radar technology used successfully to find trash hot-spots
Contributed by Chris Pincetich, Marine Biologist, SeaTurtles.org
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Sausalito, California - A team of non-profit scientists has
begun using high-frequency radar to locate and cleanup
trash hot-spots on the waters of the
San Francisco Bay.
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Chris Pincetich of SeaTurtles.org speaking
with local ABC news affiliate as San Francisco
Bay exercise gets underway.
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Using a small boat launched from Sausalito, the team was able
to locate two hot-spots of trash, or marine debris as it is called
at sea, in just under an hour. Dip nets collected foam pieces,
discarded rope, plastic bags, plastic cups, and dozens of other
items. “Over 90% of the recovered trash items were plastic, and 87% of those were
disposable items people use once and litter or landfill,” said Chris Pincetich, Ph.D.
marine biologist and leader of Marine Debris Action Teams, a project of
SeaTurtles.org. “The plastic is polluting the critical habitat feeding area of
leatherback sea turtles offshore of San Francisco Bay and may be harming them and
other marine life.”
The teams’ ultimate goal is to prove that this technology could target the massive
accumulation of plastic pollution in Pacific Ocean gyres. Plastic marine debris is known to harm wildlife in the ocean, like Pacific
leatherback sea turtles, that accidentally ingest it or become entangled in it.
The Pacific leatherback swims 6,000 miles across the ocean to feed on jellyfish along the California coast. More than 16,000
square miles of California’s coastal waters were designated as critical habit for the leatherbacks earlier this year. “We were able go
directly to high-density piles of plastic pollution using this high-resolution radar technology, just as we anticipated,” said Nick
Drobac, Executive Director of The Clean Oceans Project. “I’m confident that this work
in the San Francisco Bay will demonstrate that we can have equal success on the high
seas tackling the massive amounts of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean.”
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Above: Nick Drobac explaining to NBC
Bay Area news how the team utilizes the
SF Bay Currents App to look for front
lines and other convergence zones.
Below: The San Francisco Bay SeaSonde
network data is fed into the app which
displays a surface currents nowcast and
short-term forecast. |
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“Floating debris tends to be concentrated in convergence areas that can be monitored
in real-time using high-frequency radar” said Dr. Toby Garfield at San Francisco State
University, who oversees parts of the network of radar along California’s coast. “We are
very pleased that this data is being used to remove marine debris much more
effectively.”
The Clean Oceans Project has been assembling technologies to launch offshore
missions to address the growing epidemic of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans
through a plan to efficiently locate it, collect it, and process it into diesel fuel using
machines they possess. The SeaTurtles.org works in California and around the world to
protect endangered sea turtles and formed Marine Debris Action Teams in 2011 to stem
the tide of plastic pollution in sea turtle feeding areas through cleanups, scientific
research, outreach, and education. These two groups have developed a collaboration in
San Francisco Bay where local volunteers can assist with cleanups before litter reaches
the open ocean.
The radar used to locate litter hot-spots is part of the Coastal Ocean Currents
Monitoring Program (COCMP) established in 2005 to measure coastal surface
circulation along the whole California Coast. Nearly sixty CODAR SeaSonde radar
stations along the coast provide live data on offshore currents to oceanographers, ocean
rescue teams, and oil spill response teams. Most stations provide 1 or 3 km resolution
but the system inside the San Francisco Bay offers 0.4 km spatial resolution of current
movements in the central Bay. This high-resolution portion of network provided
important current
information during the
response effort to the
Cosco Busan oil spill of
2007. |
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| Team members show off trash retrieved at a convergence zone. |
“Studies determined that 37% of leatherback sea turtles have
plastic inside of them, likely because they mistake floating plastic
for jellyfish, their main prey,” said Dr. Pincetich. “Since most dead
sea turtles are eaten by sharks or sink, there could be far more
dying offshore from plastic pollution than we know about.”
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