97-12-23, Clarice Clark (jbroadus at seanet.com) writes:

<< When you do work on Midway Island you feel like you are in the middle
of the absolute farthest "corner" of the ocean from anywhere, but the
plastic problem there is equally dramatic and depressing.... ....snip.... >>

Right you are Clarice! I remember some months ago when you and Jim posted to
Tweeters before and after your trip to Midway. I can attest to what Clarice
writes. It seems I had a really really bad day on my birthday, August 12,
1988, as I just pulled out my field journal, vol.40, pp5056-5068, and looking
up reference to a research cruise conducted quite literally 'out in the middle
of nowhere', the middle of the North Pacific Gyre, running survey line
transects between 35N and 45N between the Dateline and Japan. This is in
the NW Pacific in the middle between Midway and the western Aleutians. The
North Pacific Gyre is an area often beset dead calm under the prevailing and
stable strong high atmospheric pressure. I was the lone American and
foreigner onboard the South Korean fisheries R/V "Pusan 851" out of Pusan,
ROK, conducting squid driftnet research and I was aboard collecting line
transect data on marine mammals, seabirds, AND marine debris.

[BTW; Gene Hunn: In looking up this reference but in the 'wrong' volume, I
just stumbled upon a 06Nov1987 entry in my daily/hourly running seabird
sightings field tables and notes from the Seattle based tug, "Phillips Foss"
then towing the disabled NOAA R/V "Miller Freeman" into the Port of Seattle,
two Parakeet Auklets and nine Mottled Petrels way off Westport and Pacific Co.
I'm not sure just yet where these may fall with respect to the 200 nmile EEZ,
but I may now be able to belatedly 'tick' off Parakeet Auklet, off Washington!
Hmmm...Oh my! :-)) ].

That day (8/12/88) was a nightmare it seems from my notes which I should now
probably destroy, as I went on to write about it so for pages and pages. I
seemed to have suffered a bit of an emotional breakdown which I'd kind of
forgotten about until rediscovering this now. Day after day on that cruise,
incredibly rich and fascinating for the numbers and diversity of pelagic
seabirds boosted into these waters by the Kuroshiro off eastern Asia and
Japan, which btw is the Western Pacific version of the Western Atlantic's Gulf
Stream, I was being buried alive by all the marine debris sightings data
collection. On the morning of August 12, 1988, we were in the middle of the
gyre, and already way overloaded with work, I was greeted to a cloudless day
and slick calm sea covered like snow for endless miles from horizon to horizon
with marine debris, floating plastic of all descriptions, fishing nets and
gear, everything imaginable from condoms to even the thoroughly decomposed
remains of a human body.

As for the latter, and so overwhelmed and being up on the flying bridge and
hardly able to speak a word of Korean, I ended up just blowing the body off.
Screw it; just pass it by and don't say anything. Why bother?! It's way way
long since dead, rotted, and mostly consumed, and I'd never be able to convey
and translate the sighting to the officers and crew in any timely manner where
it would be practical to turn the vessel around and recover it much less find
it again. And even if we did; what on earth would be do with it?!

My notes for that unhappy birthday reveal me as coming completely apart --
pages and pages describing this incredible mess, the overload of research
expectations overwhelming my drive and insistence for complete perfection in
field data collection, and a most scathing and unflattering written screaming
verbal attack upon my employers and superiors and everyone even remotely
connected, from Auke Bay to Seattle to San Diego to Washington, D.C. and
beyond who had NO IDEA what reality out there was really like. Very immature
and childish and an embarrassingly pointless waste of time and energy as I
read back on it now! I have photos (somewhere) as proof of the existence of
this horrorific dumping ground. I think I might have even showed some of them
once upon a time years ago at a WOS meeting show & tell night; I can't recall
for sure.

Why here, out in the middle of nowhere, you wonder. The North Pacific Gyre is
a centralized collecting spot created by the circulating ocean currents and
the presence of the mostly stable North Pacific High Pressure, "the big H" I
like to call it :-). Imagine a large whirlpool where anything that floats
concentrates in the middle. This is what it is out there, a whirlpool, but on
a huge grand scale. You can do this on a smaller scale in your kitchen sink!
All this marine debris discarded over the years just keeps piling up out
there. It's origins can be from Asia and Japan (the all time champions of
excessive plastics production -- NO racist slur or slight implied or to be
interpreted), Hawaii, far away and remote Pacific islands, and the U.S.
mainland, as well as vessel dumping at sea. When 'the big H' breaks down and
during seasonal storms, no small amount of this material is released into the
current system to travel thousands of miles to end up on beaches all around
the Pacific Rim, or float around endlessly until redeposited back in the gyre.
That which remains is suppressed by wave action and rough seas to be suspended
for a time out of sight just below the surface until prolonged calm conditions
prevail once again and it all appears back at the surface.

>From time to time, I hear of groups getting together for an "annual" beach
walk and cleanup. Why even bother, I often wonder.

Until now, I have never written of this experience anywhere nor rarely have
even spoken of it. I was so infuriated upon my return to Seattle and post-
cruise debriefing session at the NOAA Sand Point facility back then and the
complete disregard, lack of understanding, and blatant racist attitudes by
some of my superiors, esteemed scientists with ulterior agendas, that I pretty
much then and there kissed off NOAA Sand Point and became mostly involved with
the SW group in San Diego where I've been primarily engaged ever since. The
emotional toll all this took at the time has kept revealing this until now
mostly suppressed.

Someday I suppose, I should write up something about a remarkable encounter
with marine debris on one of the Eastern Tropical Pacific (ETP) tuna/dolphin
research cruises. Well okay, now :-) While on the NOAA R/V "David Starr
Jordan", 90 nmiles off Nicaragua several years ago, we came upon by chance a
small area of dumped bales of cocaine. Picture if you will; Red-footed
Boobies sitting around on 25 kilogram bales of cocaine! :-)) We set about
recovering bale upon bale, ...minus the boobies of course :-)). Each bale at
25 kg (~55lbs) and off the water in a dip-net or man-handled from a small
zodiac is pretty heavy stuff. All in all we recovered one bale short of a
ton, while leaving behind much more for fear of our safety and at the urging
of the DEA and U.S. Navy to "get the hell out of there and don't stop for
anyone or anything!" Everyone was 'buzzed' just from the man-handling
contact. No, none of us became super rich multimillionaires, though we ALL
could have :-)). We later rendezvoused with a nearby U.S. Navy destroyer on
drug patrol and transferred it all over to them. There's plenty more to be
found floating around loose out there. Even during booby surveys on
Clipperton Island (atoll), 600 nmiles off southern Mexico, and during the 6
mile circuitous walks along the beaches, it was not uncommon to find little
individual kilo packs of cocaine all nice and neatly wrapped, washed up
amongst all the other litter which originated from who knows where.

----break----

[I'm afraid I'm suddenly crushed out of steam here now. In the middle of this
writing, I've just learned, here and now, on this hallowed Christmas Eve, this
time and season of love and giving and sharing, regardless of your faith or
beliefs, that my only brother has been suddenly hospitalized and diagnosed
with full blown AIDS in New York City. He was scheduled to be flying today to
visit my aging and failing parents in Missouri over the holidays. I'm afraid
that I am at a complete loss for words now and feeling suddenly so alone and
helpless and must lighten up on Tweeters for awhile. I hope this is not some
untimely form of personalized retribution for some recent past transgressions
here on the forum and elsewhere. I should be the one taking the fall, not he
nor my family. One can't help but wonder. Somehow, suddenly, all those
countless hours and life at sea and even yammering away here on Tweeters seems
so irrelevant right now. I think I will be spending Christmas morning out in
quiet lonely solitude and nature for an introspective walk up on Rob Conway's
Cougar Mountain].

Have a very Merry Christmas and holiday season everyone. The tweeters forum
at times has almost become a part of the family for me when I'm ashore and
intown. Thank you all and sorry for ending so abruptly with a bombshell.
--Richard

Richard Rowlett (Pagodroma at aol.com)
47.56N, 122.13W
(Seattle/Bellevue, WA USA)