wing across the vast North Pacific — including debris from the Japanese tsunami, which could start arriving on our coast in two years.

What we do know is that marine garbage is ubiquitous and wreaking havoc at every level of the marine environment.

A new B.C. study estimates there are 36,000 pieces of "synthetic marine debris" -garbage the size of fists to fridges -floating around the coastline, from remote inland fiords to 150 kilometres offshore.

Of that, 49 per cent is Styrofoam or similar polystyrene products, 15 per cent plastic bottles, 10.5 per cent plastic bags and 6.3 per cent fishing gear. The rest of the garbage, slightly less than 20 per cent of the total, includes plastic, cardboard, wrappers, buoys, aluminum cans, and so on.

There are heavier concentrations of garbage in some places than in others — Victoria, Langara Island off northern Haida Gwaii, and the Cape Scott area of northern Vancouver Island, for example — perhaps due to ocean currents creating eddies that collect trash.

British Columbia Marine Mammal Response Program workers disentangled this steller sea lion at Race Rocks in 2009. A worker with a darting gun can be seen in the left of the frame.

The study was conducted over three summers aboard the Raincoast Conservation Society's 21-metre sailboat; visual sightings during line-transect surveys were combined with computer modelling to interpolate results for the entire coast. The estimates do not include garbage on beaches or unseen debris in the water column or ocean bottom.

"It's the tip of the iceberg," said Rob Williams, a researcher with the University of B.C. marine mammal research unit and lead author of the study, soon to be published in Marine Pollution Bulletin.

"There is more trash entering the system all the time from land and marine sources, and some leaving the system when it hits the beach," he said.

"Our best solution is to prevent trash from entering the system. Beach cleanups are a great way to prevent the trash from re-entering the system at the next high tide, but we also need some debris-prevention programs."

Williams would like to see more studies in future, looking into issues such as the potential impact of garbage on marine life and into the sources of the garbage. He notes that Styrofoam is used widely in fish packing operations.

Released exclusively to The Vancouver Sun, the study precedes the Sunday launch in Hawaii of a United Nationssponsored international conference on marine debris -not just garbage such as plastics that now lace the innards of almost half the oceans' 300 species of seabirds, but abandoned fishing gear that can continue to kill marine life for decades.

Amy Fraenkel, North America director for the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), said from Washington, D.C., that in the decade since the last marine debris conference it is obvious that "the problem isn't going away. In fact, there are some signs it's getting worse."

The 2005 UNEP report Marine Litter: An Analytical Overview stated: "It is estimated that about 6.4 million tons of marine litter are disposed in the oceans and seas each year. According to other estimates and calculations, some eight million items of marine litter are dumped in oceans and seas every day . . . "

Up to 80 per cent of marine garbage is thought to come from land-based sources.

"With the predictions of plastic consumption going up, the issue of population and waste more generally, and increases in shipping and so forth, there's clearly a need for more strategic effective action," Fraenkel said. While the ingestion of plastics and other marine debris is well documented in seabirds and turtles, more recent concerns relate to plastics breaking down in the marine ecosystem where they can be absorbed by the ocean's biota and move through the food web. Other plastics can absorb and collect toxic chemicals, such as PCBs.

"It's an area of new attention," Fraenkel said. "What we really want this conference to be about is solutions. What are some of the actions that are making a difference, how can we move to actively address this issue?" It's also important for governments to work together in addressing a common problem, she said, keeping in mind that neither floating plastics nor marine life respect international boundaries.

"There's no global agreement on how to address this issue -and here are the steps to do so. It's often a very regional issue."

UNEP in 2008 estimated global plastic production at 225 million tonnes per year, Fraenkel said. The annual percapita consumption of plastics in North America and western Europe is expected to rise to 140 kg from 100 by 2015; the current per-capita consumption of 20 kg in rapidly developing countries in Asia is predicted to rise to 36 kg by 2015.

"That's just four years from now, an amazing increase," Fraenkel warned. "To me, the marine litter issue is emblematic of a much bigger problem in terms of our throwaway culture and of single-use products. It's a great issue to talk about in terms of moving toward a greener economy, a more sustainable economy, and thinking carefully about how we use our natural capital."

While animals such as seabirds and sea turtles are vulnerable to ingesting plastic confused as food, marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and sea lions (turtles, too) are at special risk from fishing gear -traps, hooks and nets, whether abandoned or engaged in active fishing.

Audubon Magazine recently documented the death of a young Laysan albatross in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands chain, its stomach filled and perforated with 12 ounces of debris, mostly plastic but also bottle caps, cigarette lighters and other inedibles. The parents had scooped up the debris while foraging on the ocean surface and regurgitated it back into the chick's beak along with squid and other real food.

Grey whales also can be at extra risk because they feed by swallowing huge amounts of ocean bottom, then filtering out small organisms before expelling the water.

During that process, they can ingest all manner of garbage that has settled on the ocean floor.

An investigation into an 11-metre adult male grey whale that washed ashore near Seattle last April found the forward of three stomach chambers filled with an obscene amount of garbage -more than 20 plastic bags, small towels, surgical gloves, sweat pants, plastic pieces, duct tape and a golf ball. Evidence of feeding in industrial waters, it exceeded anything previously found.

The whale also had cuts on its head, possibly caused by a boat propeller. Experts could not conclude what ultimately caused the death.

"It was very unusual," noted Jessie Huggins, a biologist with Cascadia Research. "Typically, we find a lot of natural debris, like wood chips and twigs and leaves and occasionally small pieces of plastic or a rubber glove. The amount of garbage in that whale was unprecedented for this area."

Shoreline cleanup initiatives are one way to allow citizens to feel they are making a contribution to our ocean environment. Launched by the Vancouver Aquarium in 1993, the national Great Canadian Shoreline Cleanup has resulted in the collection of 41,213 kg of litter on 782 km of shoreline in B.C.

In terms of the top-12 individual items of garbage: cigarettes topped the list at 114,913; food wrappers, 34,558; plastic bags, 19,686; caps/lids 18,467; cups and cutlery, 8,416; straws/stir sticks, 7,555; paper bags, 7,111; glass bottles, 6,955; beverage cans, 6,679; building materials, 5,427; rope 5,421; and tobacco packaging, 5,201.

Reducing the likelihood of the problem occurring in the first place also takes government action.

Brock Macdonald, executive director of the Recycling Council of B.C., noted some environmentally progressive cities — including Carmel, Berkeley and Malibu in California — have banned polystyrene containers.

"They're mostly areas with a shoreline," he said. "You become aware of it when it floats around and winds up on a beach. Polystyrenes are an issue."

In B.C., similar initiatives are handled provincially through the framework Recycling Regulation.

It allows the province to bring an increasing number of products under industry stewardship programs, including expansion since 2007 of recycling fees at the point of purchase to cover the cost of recycling electronics.

The next step is a packaging initiative, Macdonald said.

"The general consensus is that it's going to be pretty broad — fast-food packaging, product packaging . . . I would think polystyrene products would fall under that plan, as would plastic bags, coffee cups, that sort of stuff."

Colin Grewar, spokesman for the Ministry of Environment, noted that in November 2010, B.C., Oregon, Washington and California committed to new initiatives to address manmade marine debris, including collaborative action on packaging-product stewardship. B.C. is also working with other Canadian jurisdictions on the Canada-wide Strategy for Sustainable Packaging and Canadawide Action Plan for Extended Producer Responsibility.

The new packaging initiative "would greatly enhance the curbside blue-box collection program" and should be operational by 2015. Packaging accounts for 20 to 30 per cent of what goes into landfills.

The shipping sector poses unique challenges when it comes to reducing ocean debris, says Alison Lane, a senior associate (marine) with URS Australia, a company that provides engineering, environmental and technical services.

Lane, a speaker at next week's marine debris conference in Hawaii (www.5imdc.org), cites ocean dumping as a key issue of concern. That's when waste is loaded onto a ship with the "express purpose of taking it out to sea and dumping it." It also includes scuttling old ships at sea and the dumping of dredge spoils.

A second key issue relates to "disposal" or "discharge" and refers to garbage that is generated during the voyage or the normal operations of the ship and is then discarded into the ocean.

Ocean dumping is regulated internationally by the 1972 London Convention and the 1996 Protocol to the London Convention (the LC/LP), under the International Maritime Organization convention.

The LC/LP prohibits most waste types from being dumped at sea and imposes a permitting system for any dumping to occur, Lane said. The discharge of wastes generated on-board boats can include oil, air emissions, and, of course, garbage, the latter governed by another International Maritime Organization convention, known as MARPOL.

MARPOL Annex V, which deals with garbage, came into effect in 1988 and now covers about 97 per cent of the world's registered shipping tonnage. It prohibits discharge of plastics and imposes restrictions on other types of garbage that can be discharged -among them, glass, metal, crockery, cardboard and food.

But important changes are in the works, Lane said, based on extensive international consultations and meetings over the past five years. A draft is scheduled for adoption by the International Maritime Organization in July 2011.

"The changes are very significant, effectively prohibiting the discharge of nearly any type of garbage from ships at sea, with only a few exceptions," Lane said.

Food wastes will still be permitted to be discharged, as will small amounts of cargo residues contained in hold washing water and animal carcasses where animals die during live transport.

"Certainly ships routinely discharge garbage at sea, much of it legal under the existing convention, but anecdotal evidence suggests that illegal discharges are also going on," she said.

"The revised annex is far more black and white and, if adopted, will hopefully help shift the culture towards landing pretty much all garbage to shorebased reception facilities."

While it is difficult to source marine debris, she said, one study presented to the International Maritime Organization suggested that 20 per cent or more of marine debris is from vessels.

"Enough for it to be an issue that needs resolving," she said.

To learn more, visit United Nations Environmental Program, www.unep.org, then search for marine litter; Algalita Marine Research Foundation, www.algalita.org; Plastic Pollution Coalition, www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org; Ocean Gybe, www.oceangybe.com.

March 22, 2011

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