The 5 Gyres visit to Cape Town coincides with the Plastikos exhibition which opened in the Aquarium earlier this month. Produced by Simon MAX Bannister, Plastikos is a unique exhibition that aims to raise awareness about waste – particularly plastic and micro-plastic – and its impact on the oceans, through art. Works are made from reclaimed polyethylene plastic which the artist collected by hand from the shorelines, roadsides and landfills of South Africa. Plastikos will be on display at the Aquarium until the end of January 2011. 

See http://www.aquarium.co.za/blog/entry/new_exhibit_behold_the_creatures_of_plastikos/ and www.maxplanet.info.

Pro surfers join voyage to advance research on impact of floating pollution on human health and marine life.

SANTA MONICA, CA: OCT 27 – Researchers will embark on a voyage on 8 November to show that every ocean on the globe is polluted with plastic that is harming marine wildlife and potentially threatening human health.

The 5 Gyres Institute, collaborating with Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF) and Pangaea Exploration, is leading this expedition.

The 5 Gyres team, led by its co-founders Marcus Eriksen and Anna Cummins, will sail from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil to Cape Town, South Africa on the first transatlantic southern hemisphere plastic pollution research trip. Cummins and Eriksen, overseeing a 13-member crew of researchers, journalists and others for the first global study of the problem, want the world to know that the scourge is not confined to a single mythical “Texas-size garbage patch”.

“You can’t cross an ocean today without finding plastic pollution,” says Cummins.

A gyre is a rotating system of ocean currents where floating debris accumulates. Eriksen and Cummins plan to produce the first comprehensive snapshot analysis of plastic pollution in each of the globe’s five gyres.

Building on AMRF’s discovery of plastic pollution in the North Pacific subtropical gyre, the 5 Gyres crew has discovered garbage patches in the North Atlantic gyre and the Indian Ocean gyre. No other researchers have been to as many gyres.

Two renowned professional surfers, James Pribram and Mary Osborne, will join the voyage to help raise awareness. “My goal is to share my experience with the world in becoming a spokesperson against plastic waste,” says Pribram, aka the Eco-Warrior and O’Neill ambassador.

The Rio-to-Cape Town voyage will be aboard Pangaea Exploration’s racing sloop, Sea Dragon. In addition to sailing through gyres, the team aims to advance its research project, looking into whether humans are harmed by eating fish that have ingested plastic debris contaminated with persistent organic pollutants such as DDT and PCBs.

PhD candidate Chelsea Rochman of UC Davis will lead this research. Cummins has already found trace elements of such toxins in her body, and the crew will also analyse seawater for the same pollutants. “We want to show people wherever we sail that the problem contaminates their international waters,” Eriksen says. “They cannot say, ‘Well, that’s across the ocean, what does that have to do with my country?’”

Eriksen and Cummins plan to sail across the South Pacific gyre – the fifth subtropical gyre – in March 2011.

5 Gyres is partnering with the United Nations Environment Programme’s Safe Planet campaign and Eriksen and Cummins will be speaking at AMRF’s 2011 Plastics Are Forever International Youth Summit.

The Sea Dragon crew will be communicating via blogs with more than 1 850 Los Angeles school children through AMRF’s Ship-2-Shore Education programme. Charles Moore, AMRF’s founder, first put the Great Pacific Garbage Patch on the map.

Rio-to-Cape Town sponsors include Chaco, Quiksilver and EcoUsable.

About 5 Gyres Institute

5 Gyres Institute is a non-profit organisation committed to meaningful change through research and education. The organisation disseminates its findings through national lecture tours and raises awareness of ocean plastic pollution through voyages, including that aboard JUNKraft, a boat built of 15 000 plastic bottles in 2008. The 5 Gyres Institute collaborates with Algalita Marine Research Foundation and Pangaea Exploration, which provide it with a marine laboratory and research vessel respectively. After studying the five subtropical gyres, 5 Gyres will monitor these vortexes through the travel trawl programme, as part of which research equipment is loaned to volunteer “citizen scientists”.

Media contact: Zan Dubin Scott, +1 (310) 383 0956; zan@zdscommunications.com.