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Check out the rest of the photos from the Atlantic Gyre’s research trip by clicking here. We are proud to see some of the team members sporting Looptworks Gear in the photo’s above!
The Atlantic Gyre research team has reportedly been coming upon more and more flotsom, windrows and general junk. Check out these video’s posted by the research team. In the first clip, the team discovers a little jelly fish embedded with plastic. (Both video’s are only about 30 seconds long).
1st Trawl in Caribbean on Vimo
This second video is from a more recent trawl.
Chasing Windrows on Vimeo
I’m sure that we can all agree that these plastic items do not belong in our oceans! If you are interested in reducing the amount of plastics that are flowing into your closest waterway, here are a few links to plastic waste solution.
All suggestions and links have been taken from Sami Ewers who writes, Sustainably Yours. To view this post, The dedicated Recycler, or other Sustainably Yours columns, you can visit weekly on the Greenery blog hosted by WEND magazine.
What you can recycle, if you find the right place:
Styrofoam – search earth911.com and you should be able to find a center for styrofoam recycling in your city.
#5 plastic – go to Preserve.com to search for a drop-off location, or to learn how you can send your #5 plastics directly to them.
Toothbrush/razor handles — Send these directly to Preserve by printing out a pre-paid mailing label.
Water filters — send or drop off by searching here.
Bottle caps — Ones “that twist on with a threaded neck such as caps on shampoo, water, soda, milk and other beverage bottles, flip top caps on tubes and food product bottles (such as ketchup and mayonnaise), laundry detergents and some jar lids such as peanut butter” These can be sent to Aveda to be used for new containers.
A display of ceanic flotsam (all plastic). Note the Looptworks Deer Grazer Tee.
“After a temporary break in the weather and a fairly brutal night, the crew was up and in science mode again. Just around 11 am, the sun broke and Marcus and Anna spotted what’s called a wind row or flotsam line. The sea was fairly calm, and we followed the row.” -Stiv Wilson from WEND magazine.
The research crew supported by WEND, Surfrider, Aquapac, Looptworks and Patagonia has not yet reached the heart of the Atlantic Gyre and already, has come across Wind Row’s or Flotsam Lines of debris. According to Stiv’s article these lines either wash ashore or gather in the gyre which is still two nautical days of sailing away from their current location.
Maybe you wonder what you can do to reduce the input of plastics into our beautiful oceans? Here are a few suggestions:
1. Make sure all your plastic debris is either recycled or placed in municipal garbage cans.
2. Pick up plastic (bottle caps, plastic bags, ect) and other trash from the streets and make sure it makes it to a proper disposal area. One of the major contributors to the worlds gyre’s is storm drain runoff.
3. Don’t litter.
4. Choose not to support plastic with your dollars. Use reusable bags! Buy can soda! Use a wooden toothbrush!
This is a serious problem that needs serious attention. One thing that Looptworks does to reduce our plastic footprint is never utilizing poly-bag shipment methods. With almost every apparel company out there, when receiving new garments from warehouses and factories, the garments are individually wrapped in plastic called poly-bags, this is done so that the garment dosen’t get dirty. It is an added cost to the company that is in turn added to the cost of the garment. Looptworks does not allow any of our shipped garments to be poly-baged, instead we ask our warehouseman to wash their hands before handling garments.
To read the rest of Stiv’s article please click here.
Anna and Marcus come upon some floating debris. Yes, that is a rubber boot.
Stiv Wilson of WEND Magazine
A few weeks ago we mentioned Stiv Wilson Editor in Chief of WEND Magazine, who was invited to be a part of a research mission to the Atlantic Gyre, a diffuse area in the Bermuda Triangle nestled in between the US Virgin Islands and Bermuda. The North Pacific Gyre was the only previously known plastic floating island, measuring twice the size of the state of Texas. There are now believed to be 4 more and this trip to the Atlantic Gyre is the first of its kind to research the amount of debris caught in this circular current.
Well, Stiv and his supporters including Looptworks, Surfrider Foundation many other anonymous donors have made this trip a reality. Stiv will be joining a team lead by, Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins from Algalita Marine Research Foundation and Livable Legacy.
Today, Stiv reported to WEND’s online magazine (which can be read by clicking here) that he has arrived in the US Virgin Islands and is in the process of preparing for an epic journey of 810 Nautical Miles. During this sojourn Stiv will accompany Dr. Erikson and Anna Cummins in gathering samples and testing the density of debris that has thus far accumulated in the untested Atlantic Gyre.
Looptworks along with Keen, Patagonia, Surfrider Foundation and Aquapac are supporting and will be following Stiv’s account of the trip for its entirety. Because the Looptworks team lives to play in our oceans we want to highlight action and awareness toward keeping our oceans pristine. If you would like to learn more about previously researched North Pacific Gyre, please watch this short video: by clicking here
Nurdles are tiny pellets of toxic-absorbing plastic that float in our oceans… and into our food chain.
A gyre is a naturally occurring vortex created by circulating water. There are five such high-pressure zones in the Earth’s oceans – in the South Pacific, the North and South Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and the largest, The North Pacific gyre.
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