Tracking the Plastic Flotilla
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When I was a little tot, I loved the book “Treasure Island”. Read it over and over again for a whole summer! The idea of adventure and the ocean, seeing and exploring islands, lost treasure. I just couldn’t get enough of that stuff. Then I was intrigued by the fact of being stranded on a desert island. What would you do to survive, how could you get help?
How about the idea of a message in a bottle, drifting off in the ocean? Someone gets the message and somehow you are rescued years later. It was always fascinating to me and there have been lots of stories of messages in bottles being discovered years later.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, otherwise known as the Pacific trash vortex, simply described, is a concentration of all of the plastic trash that have been thrown in the Pacific ocean. Think of the currents as a rotating hurricane. In the center of this hurricane, there will be a calm “eye” of the currents, called a Gyre, in which there is very little movement. This has the effect of creating a “landing zone” that collects and concentrates all of the plastics that have been thrown into the ocean.
Because plastics do not readily break down, the only thing that happens is the plastic bits become smaller and smaller as they are torn apart. It has been estimated that the average amount of plastic bits in the Pacific Trash vortex is 47,000 pieces of plastic per square mile of ocean.
Just how big is the Pacific Trash Vortex? Estimates run from as small as the State of Texas to as high as the same square footage as the United States. Astonishing!
Why am I bringing up the message in a bottle thing? Because this is how I am introducing an exciting new Mad Mikes America science project!
What I will be doing is creating a high tech “message in a bottle”.This bottle, approximately 4 inches in diameter and 14 inches long, will have the capability of transmitting it’s geographical latitude and longitude position, giving its exact position in the ocean. It will do this once per day using Global-Star Low Earth orbiting satellite. That information will be sent back down and provided as GPS information that I can access by using the internet.As the days go by, the traveled ocean path that this bottle has floated will be available using Google Earth and links provided by MMA.
I have already acquired the needed equipment to proceed with the project and hope to have it completed within a couple of months. The power for the “message in a bottle” will be done by harvesting the motion of the ocean waves as it is floating using a new technology called “Energy Harvesting”. This technology could be compared to collecting drops of water all day long and then getting a “cup of energy” at the end of the day that will be enough to send it’s information.
It also has a secondary backup power source of Lithium Ion batteries that will give it a 3 year life of sending information. Before this 3 years is completed, it will be picked up out of the ocean by using it’s transmitted position to show its exact location for retrieval.
My schedule is to have the bottle thrown into the Kuroshio Pacific western boundary current by an acquaintance in the latter part of November. More exact information will be given at a latter date.
My hope is to not only provide a very interesting science study,drawing interest to the way ocean currents behave, but because I think that it will wind up in the Great Pacific Trash Vortex, draw attention to this incredible problem that most people are not even aware off.
I would like to thank Mad Mike for allowing me to make public something from my “Treasure Island” imagination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
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I really think that you’ve done a amazing job with this wordpress site it looks really good and you have a ton of great information as well, I know I found what I was looking for anyway. Just thought I would take the time to comment, again keep up the great work
You are going to put a GPS chip into a bottle to deposit into the plastic island in the Pacific to track it? You are going to track it’s journey in order to plot the course the plastic island is taking? Correct? I think it’s fascinating. It will track where this chip / plastic goo island goes… and you will report on it’s progress… ?
I am going to put a GPS transceiver in a bottle. This will transmit it’s position once per day. From that information, a person will be able to use Google Earth on Mad Mikes site to show where it is and also the path that it has taken since day 1.
By the use of a KML file and Google Earth, it should display quite nicely but the specifics of how it is linked on MMA will be worked out between Mike, his Guru, and me.
I, (well not me but someone I know), will be doing the drop closer to the Kuroshio Pacific western boundary current and see if it winds up in the Plastic Vortex of trash. It is basically his Cruise vacation and an opportunity of the coincidence.
Kuroshio Current is unique, because it terminates essentially in the center of the north Pacific Ocean which marks the boundary of the North Pacific Gyre.
Since they know the location of this island, why not deliberately scoop up as much as possible to relocate it to a more harmless disposal area- where animals might not eat it at least?
I actually have dreams of the giant plastic tribute towards stupid. If we can somebody interested in using this stuff, voila T.Boone Pickens will make a fortune off it.
What a legacy we leave….
What is really a shame is that the plastic pieces are getting so small that the food chain is mistaking bits of plastic for plankton.
Since it is indigestible, they die of starvation with full stomachs.
Krell
Great Stewards of the world are we..:(
Naturally Eugene suggested that Mavis get on a life raft in that current thingy and let her float to the island of garbage. “Don’t they tag whales all the time for study?”
Sounds like Eugene and Mavis have issues? Did Mavis steal his remote or something?
This is so great Krell, even though I don’t understand the technology involved, I really dig the idea. I sincerely hope it works in all the ways you want it to.
It really isn’t that technical, Holte. The transceiver that I am using is “off the shelf” so to speak. They use them on boats to track assets, like if it was stolen. Carjack for the Ocean. Ha Ha.
So that part of the float/satellite/ground link stuff is already there. They do exactly the same thing, transmit the GPS location and you have the options of once per day or week.
I am doing a few extra things to specialize it to this project, but not rocket science. It all should work rather well.
You have got me really excited about this, you say that it is not that complex, I believe you and add that usually the best ideas are the simple ones.
Your are 100 percent on that. Keep it simple. And watch out for the little things. Instrumentation design seems to be my lot in life so I already have some experience in that field.
Some of the caveats to watch out for…(Warning geeky stuff)
Some materials will eventually allow moisture to pass through after long periods of time. The bottle will be using a material called Kynar. Almost as inert as Teflon but a lot more rigid.
Temperature differences cause condensation that will collect on and destroy electronics in about 9 months or so. So this design is a bottle in a bottle with a inert Nitrogen layer.