Thread by @RebeccaRHelm

OMG it literally took someone SWIMMING FROM HAWAII TO CALIFORNIA to discover this, but wow did we find something shocking in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch...
[a thread 🧵]…
Preprint: biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

It started when this guy name Ben Lecomte started swimming. He'd already freestyle'd his way from Japan to Hawaii, and now he was going to California. SWIMMING. And luckily for us…
benlecomte.com

The mission was clear: to swim to and through the HEART of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. To see what is ACTUALLY out there. One stroke at a time, for months. And while he swam…

The crew took samples, and our team monitored the location of the patch, guiding Ben right to it. At first, before they entered the patch, those net samples, emptied onto sieves like this one, were pretty empty. But then…

BAM. They reached the boundary of the patch and there they were. Plastic yes, but also LIFE. Life living out there totally SEPARATE from plastic! Blue floating life, called 'neuston,' that’s been in the pacific for millions of years. This is…

An ecosystem hardly anyone studies. Let me introduce you, there are the infamous man-o-war, but also…

Their predators, the blue sea dragons, who eat man-o-war and steal their stinging cells. Covering their bodies in an armor made from the weapons of their vanquished prey…

Violet snails, who cannot swim and keep from drowning by making a life raft of snail slime. They also eat the man-o-war. And, as cannibals, each other…

There were blue buttons. Flower-shaped jellies that float on the surface and shimmer and pulse, like stars…
Video: @snorkeldownunder

By-the-wind sailors, going where the wind will take them, literal living sailboats. And that's not all…

There were fish, jellies, and even insects! All living on the surface, all DESPITE plastic, totally unknown before. Like a meadow filled with plastic bags. It may look like a dump, but the meadow underneath persists. I mean...

Look at this! All that blue, THAT IS LIFE! Can you see the small snails, the rings of blue by-the-wind sailors, the blue sea dragons? All there, in the "Garbage Patch"...

Suddenly, it starts making sense. These animals float just like plastic. They're moved around by the currents and wind, just like plastic. If you look at the amount of plastic and the amount of life, they line up! More plastic, more life. And the birds and turtles...

All the animals that eat plastic... guess what! They are trying to eat  FLOATING LIFE…
source: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…

There were fish, jellies, even insects! All living on the surface, all DESPITE plastic, totally unknown before. Like a meadow filled with plastic bags. It may look like a dump, but the meadow underneath persists... I mean...

Look at this! All that blue, THAT IS LIFE! Buckets full of it! And…

Suddenly, it starts making sense. These animals float just like plastic. Their lives are moved around by the currents and wind, just like plastic. If you look at the amount of plastic and the amount of life, they line up! More plastic, more life. And the birds and turtles...

All the animals that eat plastic... guess what! They are trying to eat  FLOATING LIFE…
Source: journals.plos.org/plosbiology/ar…

The garbage patch may also be a shoeless sea of life, like the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic. This Pacific shoreless sea could be CRITICAL to the region, just as the Sargasso Sea is a nursery ground for countless species. This is why...
📷 @SargassoSeaCmsn

This is why we must stop plastic BEFORE it enters the ocean…

Cleaning up in the middle of the ocean, with giant nets, may sound like a good idea, but it could be like bulldozing a meadow to clean up plastic bags. You're going to catch life in those nets, in fact, it's already happened...

https://twitter.com/rebeccarhelm/status/1179861389575245824

When Ben left the Garbage Patch, that thick meadow of life thinned, and by the time he reached California, the surface was largely empty again. What Ben did is remarkable, not only for his unbelievable power and courage but for what he helped discover...

We need people like this. Be it swimmers or sailors, kayakers or yacht owners, to go into the open ocean and tell us what they see. This is what community science looks like. And you can be a part of it...

Join us from shore, through our global community science program @goseascience...

https://twitter.com/RebeccaRHelm/status/1391469432078274560

Explore and discover far from shore through our collaboration with Yachts for Science...

https://twitter.com/YACHTS4SCIENCE/status/1514203760020574209

And join us in helping to protect our global ocean commons...

https://twitter.com/RebeccaRHelm/status/1400553991684112385

This much I know for sure: those "Garbage Patches"...they're more than we thought they were. It's time to explore.
[End of Thread]

https://twitter.com/rebeccarhelm/status/1387872707379974150

https://twitter.com/RebeccaRHelm/status/1520128897177862145