Jim "Homer" Holm, has been a part of the Santa Cruz marine community for a long time.  He's sailed the seas and as an educator also had a huge impact here at home.  His current passion and the topic of today's talk is "Plastics at Sea."
 

This was a startling talk on the unfathomable quantity of waste, in particular plastics, in our oceans.  Non-biodegradable plastic accumulates in sea current-locked areas known as gyre's. The North Pacific Gyre is a garbage patch twice the size of Texas!

Jim talked about the many perils our ocean ecologies are currently facing such as over-fishing, oil and waste spills and climate change.  But none are impacting the oceans and it's inhabitants more than plastic.  

Some facts: The oil required to produce just 14 plastic bags is enough to drive the average car a mile.  There are 500 billion thin film (shopping) plastic bags produced each year.  That's 100 million gallons of oil!    San Francisco is leading the way in banning these bags.   The bags are banned in all of China and elsewhere around the globe.  

Although the current worst offender, plastic bags are just part of the problem.  Plastics have been around since the 1860's.  The gyre's are filled with everything imaginable made of plastic (lighters, pens, car parts, utensils...).

Plastics photodegrade, they do not biodegrade, which simply means they break down into smaller and smaller pieces, but do not decompose.  Hence, they remain forever in the environment and the food chain.  It kills many marine animals and is found in the systems of nearly all marine and near-marine animals.

This is a serious problem which we no doubt will be hearing more about. 

Here are some references for additional reading:
http://www.algalita.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Pacific_Gyre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
Google Search "North Pacific Garbage Patch"
Google Search "north pacific gyre"