Plastic is one of the best materials ever invented, but it doesn’t belong in the ocean. In this seminar, Dr Erik van Sebille will how ocean currents move plastic around the globe, and whether the infamous ‘garbage patches’ in the middle of our oceans are as big a problem as we imagine.
Practical information
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Abstract
Plastic is one of the best materials ever invented, but it doesn’t belong in the ocean. Large pieces of it can entangle turtles, birds, sharks, and other marine animals. Tiny bits of plastic, the result of the degrading actions of waves and Sun, can linger around for decades; once they get into the food chain, they too can adversely affect marine life. Many of us — scientists and concerned citizens alike — think that humankind should try to clean up oceanic plastic. But before we can best start the process, we need to understand how plastic moves through the ocean.
In this presentation, I will discuss how ocean currents move plastic around the globe, and how it eventually accumulates in the infamous garbage patches in the middle of our oceans. While these patches are an atrocity and a deeply humiliating testament to our filthy habits, I will argue that the garbage patches are actually one of the ‘best’ places for plastics to be. This is because the risk of plastic to sea life is much greater near our coastlines than in the open ocean, questioning massively popular attempts to clean up the patches with giant floating booms.
Biography
Erik is an oceanographer and climate scientist, investigating the time scales and pathways of the global ocean circulation. His research focuses on how currents and eddies in the ocean transport heat and nutrients, as well as marine organisms and plastics between different regions of the ocean.
Erik received his PhD in physical oceanography in 2009 from Utrecht University in the Netherlands, using both data from ocean observations as well as from computer simulations of the ocean to understand how different regions of the ocean are connected.
He worked in Europe, the USA, Australia and now the United Kingdom. He authored over 45 peer-reviewed articles on ocean circulation with more than 140 different co-authors.
Erik currently holds a lectureship jointly between Imperial’s Grantham Institute and Department of Physics. He is also an Associate Investigator of the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science.