Why did the possum cross the road?

Conversation with Curtis Ebbesmeyer, Mr. Flotsam—Our Oceans in Crisis

Seattlelite, Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer known for his study of currents related to the accidental release of Nike sneakers and rubber ducks, has always been attracted to the ocean.

 

Though tracking rubber duckies sounds whimsical, Ebbesmeyer shares that there is a crisis taking place in our oceans that is mostly hidden from view. The story is both heart-rending and potentially life-threatening.

 

Ebbesmeyer found his way to this story on an unlikely path.

 

He grew up in the Los Angeles on a farm, but his desire to connect to the ocean manifested early. He was a scuba diver and enjoyed watching Lloyd Bridges ‘Sea Hunt’ and Jacques Cousteau specials on television.

 

Then he got to one of those forks in the road. “I could either go to Viet Nam or enroll in oceanography school. That wasn’t a hard decision,” he says.

 

Ebbesmeyer received his oceanography Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 1973 and became Mobile Oil’s first oceanographer. They set him the engineering task of building in dangerous environments, in this case ‘Iceberg Alley’ off the Grand Banks south of Newfoundland where the Titanic sank.

 

In those days, it was believed that the 100-year wave was about 55 feet in height, so that was what oil rigs were designed to withstand.

 

Ebbesmeyer says, “We decided to actually measure the waves with scientific equipment and in 1969 we measured a 72-foot wave which became the new 100-year standard.”

 

“Now with global warming, hurricanes are routinely producing 100-foot waves. In fact, off the coast of Washington and Oregon, we’ve measured three waves measuring over 100 feet in the last three years.”

 

“A hurricane or a typhoon sounds like a big deal because of the name. In fact, we have bigger storms on the West Coast, we just don’t seem to have a fancy name for them,” he contends.

 

“‘Gale’ isn’t correct. A gale starts at 34 m.p.h. The best name I’ve seen is ‘meteorological bombs.’ Storms intensify when they hit our coast and end up as strong as the biggest of them.”

 

 

 

 

The Nike Sneaker ‘Spill’

 

Ebbesmeyer’s transformation from an engineer working for ‘Big Oil’ to passionate freelance oceanographer started sometime around 1990 when the Nike shoes went overboard.

 

According to Keith C. Heidorn, in The Weather Doctor, “In late May of 1990, the container vessel Hansa Carrier encountered a severe storm in the north Pacific Ocean on its passage from Korea to the United States. During the storm, a large wave washed twenty-one shipping containers overboard. Five of these 20-metre containers held a shipment of approximately 80,000 Nike shoes.  .   . four of the containers opened, releasing over 60,000 shoes into the north Pacific Ocean.”

 

When Ebbesmeyers’ mother heard about the shoes, she called him and said something like, “What are you doing about these shoes?  Isn’t this what you study?”

He cites his mother’s call as the beginning of his life’s work.

 

About his chosen field, he says, “I feel oceanography has gone off into ever smaller and smaller issues. It has a blind spot. I wanted to pursue what’s really floating on the ocean, which is largely unknown. I want to know what the albatrosses feed on. So I started by creating a network of beachcombers who could tell me what they were finding and where.”

 

 

Grassroots Garbage Gang and Trash

 

The honorable hobby of beach combing has a long history. Traditionally ‘jetsam’ was something thrown off a boat to lighten its load and these items were fair game when they landed on the beach wrack line—the swath of debris deposited by the previous high tide.

 

Flotsam was defined as what had floated off a wrecked ship, and it still belonged to the owner of the ship no matter where it made shore. (These definitions, used in courts to establish ownership in the early days of marine law, have been blurred.)

 

Our Grassroots Garbage Gang, which Ebbesmeyer whole-heartedly applauds, has just combed the beach picking up tons of plastics, fireworks remnants, rope, beer bottles, sofas and other larger objects. These objects are unsightly and dangerous to beach goers and marine animals alike. But they are only the trash visible to the eye of the landlubbers.

 

What Ebbesmeyer and his global network of beach combers and sailors have discovered is that there is tons of man-made, non-biodegradable, petroleum-based plastic trash floating in our oceans.

 

“There are government agencies who say they focus on the ocean but on a scale of one to ten, this issue is about a one. In my life, floating plastic gets at least an eight.”

 

 

Plastic Is a Non-biodegradable Killer

 

For hundreds of years, mankind has felt that the seas were infinite and could be used as a dumping grounds for toxic waste of all kinds.  Officially there is a no-dumping policy for the oceans, but as Ebbesmeyer indicates this is meaningless as there is no monitoring of what is actually happening on the open seas.

 

For instance, Ebbesmeyer estimates that between 2,000-10,000 containers fall overboard every year. A container can carry anything from 15,000 Nike sneakers to 10 million plastic grocery bags. And this data only captures accidents; many more infractions happen deliberately. 80% of beach garbage comes from land-based sources, and 20% from ships at sea.

 

Plastic is particularly deadly in the sea because man-made plastic objects get caught around the necks of turtles, seabirds and fish. Additionally, to a sea turtle, a floating plastic grocery bag looks like a jelly fish.

 

Adult albatrosses, as it turns out, not only eat plastic, they feed plastic to their chicks who die of starvation.

 

Floating plastic looks like food.

 

The key ingredients in plastics are petroleum and natural gas—the manufacturing of plastic bags alone accounts for 4 per cent of the world’s total oil production. According to data released by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in 2001, between 500 billion to a trillion plastic bags are consumed worldwide each year.

 

Floating debris can also absorb organic pollutants from seawater, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and DDT.

 

The Grassroots Garbage Gang is providing a critical  community service by picking up beach trash because garbage at the wrack line is simply washed back out to sea where worse horrors are happening.

 

If trash is biodegradable—even though it is unsightly—at least it is broken down over time and simply dissolves or bio-degrades back into its natural component substances.

 

Not so for plastic.

 

 

 

As plastic does not biodegrade, it simply breaks down into smaller and smaller particles until it becomes invisible to the naked eye.

 

 

Ocean Currents and Garbage Gyres

 

So there is both visible and invisible garbage in the ocean; and how it moves is something that Ebbesmeyer has studied intensively.

 

The ocean has definable currents that take predictable paths, as was proven by Ebbesymer and others in analyzing where the Nike shoes and escaped rubber duckies turned up.

 

As well, there are circular currents called gyres that push objects into spirals with relatively unmoving centers. This spiral effect, most apparent in air and water, causes tornados, the swirl of water down a drain, dust devils, and the like.

 

As any kayaker who has been caught in a whirlpool knows, once inside a gyre it is very difficult to get out. This is essentially what happens to ocean garbage.

 

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, located between the equator and 50º N latitude, there are ten million square miles that make up the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, also known as the North Pacific Gyre.

 

Caused by four prevailing ocean currents, the North Pacific Gyre has a clockwise circular pattern and in the center is what has come to be called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex.

 

Eventually, all floating trash—which is primarily plastic—ends up circling on the ocean currents and comes to rest in one of five global oceanic ‘garbage gyres.’

 

 

Microscopic Plastic Particles Outnumber Plankton

 

The hidden killer in the ocean suspended near the surface of the water in these garbage gyres are tiny particles of plastic.

 

One website indicates, “Unlike debris which biodegrades, the photodegraded plastic disintegrates into ever smaller pieces while remaining a polymer. This process continues down to the molecular level.”

 

These plastic particles float on top of the surface of the water in a zone called the neustonic layer, this is the topmost layer of water that receives the most light and is typically rich with plankton and surface feeding marine life. (Neuston is the collective term for organisms that float on or live just under the water’s surface.)

 

Our Pacific Garbage Patch has one of the highest levels of plastic particulate matter suspended in this upper water column.

 

As Ebbesmeyer indicates, “Big pieces of trash in the ocean could be a television or a refrigerator but the tiny stuff is really tiny. Imagine, shaking a salt shaker over the ocean, only the salt is tiny pieces of plastic.”

 

He continues, “In some areas, if you filter the ocean water through cheese cloth, the volume of plastic particles far outweighs plankton. There are trillions upon trillions of small particles. There are in some places twenty times the amount of plankton.”

 

In a 2001 study, ocean researchers found that the overall concentration of plastics in the ocean was greater than the concentration of zooplankton by a factor of seven.

 

This is the result of decades of plastic waste accumulating in the ocean, and it is only beginning to be studied and measured.

 

Frighteningly, this plastic waste is eaten by feeders in the neuston which are in turn eaten by larger organisms. Thus, these plastic particles enter and begin moving up the food chain.

 

It is extremely likely that when we eat ocean fish, we are consuming probably pollutant-contaminated microscopic plastic particles. As Ebbesymeyer says, “imagine pouring a salt shaker of plastic pieces over your piece of salmon.”

 

But even as oceanographers are beginning to understand the danger, there is no clear remedy in sight.

 

“It’s like putting smoke back into a bottle,” says Ebbesmeyer. “How do you do it?”

 

 

Balancing Despair with Optimism

 

Being a witness to the decimation of our oceans to trash and other ecological disasters is a heart-breaking endeavor.

 

Ebbesmeyer shares, “Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles are an endangered species. [They made the list in December of 1970.] In Texas where the females come ashore to nest and hatch their eggs, you should see the trash. It just tears your heart up watching the turtles coming onto the beach in all that trash.”

 

“And you know I just picked ten pounds of cherries in my back yard. But the starlings are gone, the bees are gone. I like to be a happy guy,” says Ebbesmeyer, “but it’s a challenge to be happy while you’re going over a waterfall.”

 

Most beachcombers are aware of the garbage problem and Ebbesmeyer attends most of the national beachcombers fairs to spread the word and talk to others about remedies.

 

Beachcombing fairs take place in the prime beachcombing coasts of the nation—our own beaches in Oregon and Washington and those of eastern Florida.

 

“The Ocean Shores fair is the first weekend in March, and Grayland has one the third weekend in March,” Ebbesmeyer says. “March and April have the most flotsam on the West Coast because of the winds blowing out of the west so it’s a natural time for the gatherings.”

 

“Grayland’s fair  has been going for 45 years. You find people collecting and selling beach glass and glass balls. I usually go there with an empty table and people put their trash on my table and we talk. Ten to twenty percent of our beach trash comes from Japan. In Hawaii is more like thirty to fifty percent.”

 

He goes on, “I remember one young boy coming by my table and saying, ‘Well, you’re never going to sell any of that stuff.’”

 

He laughs. “But I’ve never been in this for the money. I’m in it for the understanding.”

 

When asked what the solutions are to saving our oceans, Ebbesmeyer has plenty of suggestions. “We can stop putting chemicals on our lawns and all those golf courses. Stop using plastic bags at the grocery stores.”

 

“If we all make little steps we’ll be fine. We all have to do it though. It isn’t going to come from big government,” he says.

 

“We can do better. We’ve got to educate ourselves and others. People are smart—most everybody is pretty dog-gone savvy.”

 

“We can make biodegradable plastics out of corn instead of petroleum polymers. Corn-made plastic dissolves. We might be going up against the DuPont’s of the world but we can do it.”

 

“We aren’t a nation of whimps. We founded this country with some pretty tough people. We can rescue this country. I met a young cashier and she said to me, ‘I’m going to take back the planet one person at a time.’ She is trying to get people to use cloth or paper bags instead of plastic.”

 

He continues, “When you go to the beach, take a bag and fill it full of plastic and take it home. The solution has to come from all of us, one at a time. It’s got to be each of us doing something every day.”

 

“Let’s start making billions and billions of wise choices.”

Dog Days of Summer

What sleeps twenty hours a day, does not fetch, feels like silk, rarely makes a sound, does not know what stairs are, and is not a cat?

 

If you answered ‘rescue greyhound,’ you win a dog biscuit.

 

I’ve been learning about this amazing and contradictory breed from friends and acquaintances who adore, and I mean adore, their greyhounds. Some dog owners have their breed preferences but for most of us dog-lovers it’s just, bring ‘em all on—we like dogs, period.

 

What I have discovered is that if you are a greyhound fan, you really really love greyhounds.

 

Take Andi Williams for instance. Andi was a judge at Doggie Olympics last weekend and she had her beloved greyhound, Wendell Oliver Williams, aka Mr. WOW, with her for the festivities.

 

When I called Andi after the excitement was over to see if she wouldn’t mind talking to me about greyhounds, I could feel her light up on the other end of the phone,

 

“Wouldn’t mind?” she said. “I will gladly talk to anybody anytime anywhere about greyhounds. And—oh boy—do I love to tell stories about Mr. Wow. How much time do you have?”

 

But before we regale ourselves with dog tales, a little background here. Greyhounds are a fascinating breed.

 

Drawings of greyhounds were found on the tombs of Egyptian Pharaohs. During the Middle Ages, only members of the aristocracy could own greyhounds. Greyhounds can see clearly for a half mile but don’t have a very good sense of smell. They have bigger hearts and lungs (hence the large chest), more blood, and higher blood pressure than other dogs. But thin skin and no doggy undercoat—so they don’t smell like dogs.

 

Now the big question, why do we need to ‘rescue’ greyhounds?

 

Because they have been bred to be ‘racing machines.’ They have a supple spine and a ‘double suspension rotary gallop’—all four feet are off the ground in two phases, contracted and extended.

 

Before animals rights advocates came into the picture in the 1980s, over 60,000 greyhounds a year were killed at the greyhound racetracks. (There are still more than 40 tracks in 15 states.)

 

Racing greyhounds follow a little rabbit, eat, and sleep in their cages. The end.

 

They know nothing about the big world. Hence the need for ‘foster homes’ where people who know greyhounds can acclimate them to all the little details of a dog’s life that we take for granted: stairs, other dogs, windows, streets, traffic, cats, linoleum.

 

John Adams and Diana Thompson, a two-greyhound family, told a great story about one of their greyhounds, Paige.

 

“I was on the dock with Paige and Diana was out on the lake in a kayak,” says John. “Paige got out ahead of me and saw Diana and just ran to her right off the end of the dock. She had no idea what water was, or what had just happened to her.”

 

John and Diana now have Delta Dawn and Amos (aka A-moose) as part of their family and soap making crew. When I arrived to interview them several weeks ago, Delta and Amos greeted me gently at the door and, it seemed, stood right next to me until I acclimated to the scene in the warehouse.

 

As soon as they felt I had become one with the crew, they went back to their beds and watched the action.

 

Every greyhound owner talks about this companionship quality of the breed.

 

Andi shared, “Greyhounds like warm, soft things and even if they’re not sleeping, they’re on their beds. They are great watchers of their humans. In fact, you’d better be comfortable about going to the bathroom with the dog watching.”

 

“They seem to say ‘You might disappear into some big deep dark hole you haven’t told me about so I need to keep an eye on you.’”

 

It also appears that greyhounds often come in pairs.

 

Ed Strange, recently moved to Ocean Park from Texas, has ‘his girls.’ Two greyhounds—Jewel and Lizzy—and a pug named Sophie, who keeps everyone in line.

 

Ed adopted Lizzy and Jewel together because they were sisters and had never been apart. They are grand old girls at fifteen and these two long-legged beauties tower over feisty and energetic Sophie. They are a great set—sort of like two elegant salt and pepper shakers and a little votive candle.

 

Ed counsels, “What would I say to someone considering adopting a greyhound? That they are sweet companion animals. They’re not exterior dogs at all—just because they’re big doesn’t mean they want to be outside. If you’re cold they’ll be cold. They are docile—like felines, cat-like. They are always there for you and very low maintenance.”

 

He goes on, “They are sprinters, but they don’t need a lot of exercise. They are full out runners and then they like to crash.”

 

One person called greyhounds “forty-five mile per hour couch potatoes.”

 

They are truly elegant creatures.

 

Andi says, “I was attracted by their beauty. They are absolutely gorgeous in every way, every single hair of their bodies.”

 

She goes on, “Most greyhounds seem to have the wisdom of the ages. I can see everything in those eyes.”

 

And, like Ed, Andi concurs, “They’re quiet—they pussyfoot around, more like cats.”

 

It also appears that once you become a greyhound caretaker, you are in love forever.

 

Dee Quillen is on her third greyhound. This one is Sabrina—she raced as Sabrina’s Wish—and she has her own race track in Dee’s backyard.

 

Dee was an active member of the Greyhound Pets of America Northwest and placed over 60 greyhounds after their race careers ended at the old Multnomah Race Track in Portland before it closed.

 

“Once they don’t win two out of three races, they’re done,” she says.

 

Another active rescuer is Becky Early, of Surfside. Becky is tending to Sirius, Belle and Casey and is part of Puget Sound Greyhound Adoption group which works out of Seattle.

 

“We’re small but mighty,” Becky says of the group. “We work with people in Kansas and Colorado to adopt dogs and we match personalities. We have a very high success rate.”

 

“Yes, you can give people my phone number if they are interested in greyhound adoption—360-665-2874.”

 

Greyhounders form an informal club on the Peninsula. They may not know each other by name but they know the names of everyone’s dogs.

 

Jim and Mary Frances Bowers have an Italian Greyhound—a smaller version of the larger hound—called, also, Amos. And Mary let me in on Amo’s romantic secret—he is in love with Delta Dawn.

 

Delta must be quite a knock-out in the world of greyhounds because, according to Andi, Wendell is also head over heals for her.

 

“The first time he saw Delta Dawn. That was it for him. He was hooked.”

 

Mr. WOW might be able to woo Delta with a special talent he revealed to Andi. He can ‘roo.’

 

No this is not a joke. Greyhounds are hounds and hounds bay, especially at a gathering of greyhounds if a huntsman is brought out with a hunting horn.

 

As Andi explains, “The majority of greyhounds are quite quiet but they are capable of barking and can. But the ‘roo’ is a very special thing.”

 

“Wendell roos as a greeting. He’s my first greyhound who’s done it. He opens his mouth up into a little circle and roos.”

 

If you have any doubts about this, just search YouTube for ‘greyhound roos’ and you’ll find a veritable roo-fest.

 

Now I ask you—what is there not to like about greyhounds?

Bug in the Machine

I have an actual bug living in my laptop. It just appeared again. Not sure what type -- but guess this is a nice place: warm, protected. Daily provisions of coffee & crumbs........This is a well-traveled little bug.