Bike Tour Exposes How Plastic Pollution is Destroying Our Planet

5 Gyres Institute
Today, the 5 Gyres Institute launched the Last Straw Plastic Pollution Solutions Outreach Tour, a 1,400 mile bicycle tour along the East Coast of the U.S. to educate the public on marine plastic pollution, conduct beach and watershed cleanups, and give evening presentations to the public.
Presentations will share their expeditions to all five major oceans studying plastic pollution in the oceanic Gyres or “garbage patches,” and will engage audiences in realistic solutions. In 2011, 5 Gyres completed the first global study on plastic pollution in the world’s oceans, finding evidence of plastic throughout, as well as in the Great Lakes region. The outreach tour will share cutting edge research, and inspire positive change to solve the plastic waste problem in our shared environment through education, source reductions, common sense policy and sustainable industry.
The 5 Gyres team will visit 13 cities from Boston, MA to Charleston, SC, hosting events to engage with citizens, activists, teachers, students, scientists, industry representatives and policymakers to share the latest and most comprehensive data on marine plastic pollution.The team will share stories, film and photography from their sailing expeditions across the major oceans.
Topics to include: the study of density of plastic present in the oceans and Great Lakes, the interaction between toxic chemicals and plastic in the marine environment, the implications of plastic ingestion by fish, birds, and mammals, how these interactions magnify up the food chain, the potential human health implications and what we can do to solve the problem.
To date, 5 Gyres has sailed more than 30,000 nautical miles researching plastic pollution and has lead successful campaigns to mitigate the environmental effect of plastic bags and plastic water bottles in all major West Coast cities and Grand Canyon National Park.
In addition to the tour, 5 Gyres is running a 5 minutes for 5 Gyres trash cleanup challenge for a chance to win prizes from the tour sponsors.
Cities part of our tour include: Boston, MA 10/3; Jameston, RI 10/4; Longbeach, NY 10/6; New Haven, CT 10/9; New York, NY 10/11; Long Branch, NJ 10/12; Philadelphia, PA 10/14-15; Baltimore, MD 10/21; Washington, D.C. 10/23; Virginia Beach, VA 10/27; Wilmington, NC 11/1; Pawley’s Island, SC 11/3, and Charleston, SC 11/5.
Sweden's reindeer have a problem. In winter, they feed on lichens buried beneath the snow. But the climate crisis is making this difficult. Warmer temperatures mean moisture sometimes falls as rain instead of snow. When the air refreezes, a layer of ice forms between the reindeer and their meal, forcing them to wander further in search of ideal conditions. And sometimes, this means crossing busy roads.
- San Antonio, Texas Unveils Largest Highway Crossing for Wildlife in ... ›
- Wildlife Crossings a Huge Success - EcoWatch ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Heatwaves are not just distinct to the land. A recent study found lakes are susceptible to temperature rise too, causing "lake heatwaves," The Independent reported.
- Climate Change Will Be Sudden and Cataclysmic Unless We Act Now ›
- There's a Heatwave at the Arctic 'Doomsday Vault' - EcoWatch ›
- Marine Heatwaves Destroy Ocean Ecosystems Like Wildfires ... ›
Trending
By Aaron W Hunter
A chance discovery of a beautifully preserved fossil in the desert landscape of Morocco has solved one of the great mysteries of biology and paleontology: how starfish evolved their arms.
The Pompeii of palaeontology. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<h2></h2><p>Although starfish might appear very robust animals, they are typically made up of lots of hard parts attached by ligaments and soft tissue which, upon death, quickly degrade. This means we rely on places like the Fezouata formations to provide snapshots of their evolution.</p><p>The starfish fossil record is patchy, especially at the critical time when many of these animal groups first appeared. Sorting out how each of the various types of ancient starfish relate to each other is like putting a puzzle together when many of the parts are missing.</p><h2>The Oldest Starfish</h2><p><em><a href="https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/216101v1.full.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cantabrigiaster</a></em> is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. It was discovered in 2003, but it has taken over 17 years to work out its true significance.</p><p>What makes <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> unique is that it lacks almost all the characteristics we find in brittle stars and starfish.</p><p>Starfish and brittle stars belong to the family Asterozoa. Their ancestors, the Somasteroids were especially fragile - before <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> we only had a handful of specimens. The celebrated Moroccan paleontologist Mohamed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.palaeo.2016.06.041" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ben Moula</a> and his local team was instrumental in discovering <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0031018216302334?via%3Dihub" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">these amazing fossils</a> near the town of Zagora, in Morocco.</p><h2>The Breakthrough</h2><p>Our breakthrough moment came when I compared the arms of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> with those of modern sea lilles, filter feeders with long feathery arms that tend to be attached to the sea floor by a stem or stalk.</p><p>The striking similarity between these modern filter feeders and the ancient starfish led our team from the University of Cambridge and Harvard University to create a new analysis. We applied a biological model to the features of all the current early Asterozoa fossils in existence, along with a sample of their closest relatives.</p>Cantabrigiaster is the most primitive starfish-like animal to be discovered in the fossil record. Aaron Hunter, Author provided
<p>Our results demonstrate <em>Cantabrigiaster</em> is the most primitive of all the Asterozoa, and most likely evolved from ancient animals called crinoids that lived 250 million years before dinosaurs. The five arms of starfish are a relic left over from these ancestors. In the case of <em>Cantabrigiaster</em>, and its starfish descendants, it evolved by flipping upside-down so its arms are face down on the sediment to feed.</p><p>Although we sampled a relatively small numbers of those ancestors, one of the unexpected outcomes was it provided an idea of how they could be related to each other. Paleontologists studying echinoderms are often lost in detail as all the different groups are so radically different from each other, so it is hard to tell which evolved first.</p>President Joe Biden officially took office Wednesday, and immediately set to work reversing some of former President Donald Trump's environmental policies.
- Biden Reaffirms Commitment to Rejoining Paris Agreement ... ›
- Biden Likely Plans to Cancel Keystone XL Pipeline on Day One ... ›
- Joe Biden Appoints Climate Crisis Team - EcoWatch ›
In many schools, the study of climate change is limited to the science. But at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, students in one class also learn how to take climate action.