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Researchers set sail to study plastic http://apocadocs.com/s.pl?1262883962
Cummins and Eriksen will be skimming the ocean's surface with a plankton net to collect plastic and fish that surface at night to forage for food. Past expeditions have found fish with plastic in their stomachs. Plastics act as magnets for toxic chemicals like PCB. Smaller fish consume plastics. Larger fish like tuna and mahi-mahi then eat those smaller fish, ingesting the toxins, which could ultimately harm humans.
"We want to see if there are large concentrations of these chemicals in our food chain, ending up on our dinner plates," she said.
Their journey will involve several voyages. The first will launch from St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, and take them across the Sargasso Sea -- an elongated region in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean roughly 700 miles by 2,000 miles -- to the Azores.... "It will be a honeymoon of sorts," Cummins said. "We got married recently in the middle of a garbage patch so it seemed fitting to make this our honeymoon."
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[Read more stories about:
plastic problems, plastic gyre, ecosystem interrelationships]
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'Doc Michael says:
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If only our honeymoon [with plastic] were over.
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