Beautiful Contradiction #2: The Plastic Vortex

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yiPZNsW8fI
This video describes the efforts of graduate students at UC San Diego's Scripps Institution in defining the problem of the accumulation plastics in the North Pacific Ocean Gire. It begins, "A thousand miles from land, the Pacific Ocean is striking in its beauty; rich, deep blue waters, calm seas and serene stillness." The beauty of the ocean has been meaningful to me from the time I can remember. Growing up in a small town on the Northern Coast of California the ocean offered many benefits: a gorgeous view to the west, a moderate climate, an opportunity to play in the toe-numbing surf, a financial resource for my stepfather and others who made their living as fisherman, and a place many of us went to catch our evening meal of crab, salmon or abalone. That beauty is now being challenged by a throw-away mentality that has led to the accumulation of plastics and other rubbish in our landfills and now in the oceans. We need to make better choices as consumers, or risk the health of our oceans' ecosystems. Even from a very selfish perspective, we need to look out for ourselves. As higher-order consumers, we will be the ones at greatest risk of accumulating all of these chemicals into our bodies. What choice will we make? There seems to be only one good one.
Beautiful Contradiction #2; the Plastic Vortex (painting above) was inspired by this tragedy. Thank you to those from Scripps for doing the work to accurately define the problem! Now that we know better, maybe we'll do better.