Fall 2010

In This Issue...

and our season's line up of fabulous Events! Come Aboard and join us!

Plastic Problems

We pride ourselves in California on being leaders in environmental issues and yet we still use and discard 19 billion plastic bags each year. It’s a hard habit to break. Used for a moment, these bags last a lifetime and wreak havoc in the natural environment.

What do we know about the impact that plastic is having on the environment? As plastic trash is blown off land into waterways and makes its way into the oceans, it follows ocean currents until it gets trapped in huge swirling vortexes. The one in the Pacific is estimated to be the size of Texas, and is known by many names: the Pacific Gyre, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Trash Island. Marine scientists studying the Great Pacific Garbage Patch recently found in a water sample that plastic broken down into microscopic pieces outnumbered plankton by a 6:1 ratio. Project Kaisei has made the journey to the gyre. Click here to see their video footage of this plastic debris epidemic. To learn more about plastic pollution please click here http://ivoiceover.com/downloads/KAISEI_5min.mov

MSI has been a successful Trash Free Zone for the last 3 years and we are now taking it to the schools in our plastics pollution prevention and Pacific Gyre education service. A grant from the San Mateo Countywide Water Pollution Prevention Program is supporting services to San Mateo county schools.

Click the image above to download a larger printable pdf

Partnered up with San Jose’s Tech Museum’s Tech Challenge, MSI is collaborating to help prepare youth in grades 5 – 12 think up innovative ways to clean up Trash Island. As a project consultant, MSI is helping Tech Challenge staff get up to speed on key content knowledge of the marine environment and plastics pollution and our staff will be judges at the Challenge itself.

Feel like rolling up your sleeves and keeping hundreds of pounds of trash from joining the gyre right now? Join MSI members and staff on Saturday, September 25th, 2010, from 9am to 12 noon as part of the annual Coastal Cleanup Day. Take your pick of three locales: Half Moon Bay’s Poplar Beach or Pillar Point (where MSI conducts all of our Tidepool Excursions). New this year for the advanced pickers, help clean up Redwood Creek by canoe launched from MSI’s beach. Volunteers will be eligible to win our “unique debris” contest/giveaway. Last year, someone brought in a rusty bicycle that found its way into the Pacific.

Ways you can help!

Know a teacher who might be interested in turning their school into a Trash Free Zone? Contact jackie@sfbaymsi.org for more information.
Encourage a group of students to enter the 2011 Tech Challenge: Click here for more information
Organize a troop of friends and family and sign up for California Coastal Cleanup Day with MSI. Click here to register

Here is one of our current favorite videos about one of our urban invasive species... check it out!

Watch