Today at Courageous Sailing Center, the campers pulled up lobster traps that not only had lobsters in them, but one was absolutely humongous! The lobster was male and estimated to be about 8-10 pounds. The other two lobsters caught were about 1-2 pounds.
Also today at CSC, all the Harbor Explorers enjoyed meeting all the members of the Rozalia project and learned about marine debris. To my surprise, many items that wind up in the ocean take a very long time to degrade in the ocean, and even though it looks like they are gone, they still exist in the water. For example, plastic breaks up into little tiny pieces called micro plastics, which take upwards of 20 years to eventually be completely gone. So anything that was thrown into the ocean that was plastic when I was only two years old, has finally been completely corroded away.
The Rozalia project helps clean out many of these horrible things in our harbor and disposes of the waste properly. They do lots of beach clean ups and also use their boat, The American Promise, to collect the trash. What the Harbor Explorers enjoyed seeing put to use was the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), which dives down to the bottom of the bay and picks up pieces of trash from the bottom. This is particularly useful in areas where the sediments might be too toxic to dredge.
It was an exciting day for the Harbor Explorers and I am happy to be with them at Piers Park and Courageous this week. See you all soon!
Annie
Also today at CSC, all the Harbor Explorers enjoyed meeting all the members of the Rozalia project and learned about marine debris. To my surprise, many items that wind up in the ocean take a very long time to degrade in the ocean, and even though it looks like they are gone, they still exist in the water. For example, plastic breaks up into little tiny pieces called micro plastics, which take upwards of 20 years to eventually be completely gone. So anything that was thrown into the ocean that was plastic when I was only two years old, has finally been completely corroded away.
It was an exciting day for the Harbor Explorers and I am happy to be with them at Piers Park and Courageous this week. See you all soon!
Annie
3 comments:
Hi Annie. This is Rebecca from Rozalia Project. Great blog! I just wanted to clear up one thing that you mentioned in the blog- you said that plastic takes 20 years to dissolve in the ocean and actually, plastic (as it is currently made) will never dissolve or break down completely in the water. It takes twenty years for a plastic bag to break into small pieces of plastic, called microplastic, but those small pieces of plastic will remain in the ocean forever until someone removes them. Hope this helps clear up the misconception about plastic in the ocean!
Hey Annie, this is Rebecca from Rozalia Project. Great blog! I just wanted to clear up an error that you mentioned in your blog- you said it takes 20 years for plastic to dissolve in the ocean but in fact, plastic (as it is currently made) will never dissolve to go away in the ocean. Plastic objects will break into smaller pieces of plastic, called microplastic, but those small pieces will stay in the ocean forever until some one removes them or they are eaten. It takes up to 20 years for a plastic bag to break into small pieces of plastic and then those small pieces will stay in the ocean indefinitely. Hope this helps clear up any confusion!
Hey Annie, this is Rebecca from Rozalia Project. Great blog! I just wanted to clear up an error that you mentioned in your blog- you said it takes 20 years for plastic to dissolve in the ocean but in fact, plastic (as it is currently made) will never dissolve to go away in the ocean. Plastic objects will break into smaller pieces of plastic, called microplastic, but those small pieces will stay in the ocean forever until some one removes them or they are eaten. It takes up to 20 years for a plastic bag to break into small pieces of plastic and then those small pieces will stay in the ocean indefinitely. Hope this helps clear up any confusion!
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