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THE DARK SIDE
Located in the main gallery
"Turtle Rescue 2014"
Olive Ridley Project. YouTube, 8 Jan 2014
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Two Olive Ridley sea turtles are rescued from an abandoned fishing net. Such nets, known as "ghost nets," continue to entangle and kill marine life.
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4:19min
"The Sea Turtle with a Straw in its Nostril - No To Single Use Plastics [Short Version]."
COASTS. YouTube, 1 Nov 2015
A simple plastic straw in the ocean causes terrible suffering.
www.gofundme.com/wuhvd6zj
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3:47min
"Sea Lions Cut Free from Garbage."
Vancouver Aquarium. YouTube, 30 Oct 2013.
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Two California sea lions are disentangled from plastic fish-packing straps around their necks.
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4:50min
"Dolphin Rescue Hawaii.mp4."
Manta Ray Advocates Hawaii. YouTube, 13 Jan 2013.
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Dolphin "asks" divers for help.
www.DolphinRescueHawaii.com
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8:32min
"Saving Valentina.6.8.11.h264.mov"
Ielinoyes. YouTube, 13 Jun 2011.
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Incredible display of gratitude and joy from a humpback whale.
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8:20min
Peanut, the Turtle
Peanut, a red-eared slider (land turtle), was a small turtle when she became entangled in a six-pack packaging ring. Over time, her shell grew except for the area within the ring.
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When Peanut was found in 1993, she was taken to a zoo in St. Louis where the six-pack ring was removed. It was estimated that the piece of litter had been around her for approximately 4 years. Because Peanut's shell protected her body, she has survived. However, some of her organs do not function properly due to the constriction when growing. Her shell cannot "pop" back to the shape it should be. Today, Peanut is still in the care of the Missouri Department of Conservation and is the mascot for Missouri's "No More Trash" campaign.
What's in a Whale?
In 2010, a 37-foot dead gray whale whale washed up on the beach in West Seattle. A hose of foreign items were found in its stomach including plastics, duct tape, rope, fishing line, sweat pants, towels, a juice pack, a sock, a golf ball, and a 5 A Day fruit and vegetable bag. Gray whales are bottom feeders–an indication of the debris problem beneath the ocean's surface.
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There are other examples of ocean debris being ingested by whales. Two sperm whales stranded on the norther California coast in 2008 had large amounts of plastic debris and fishing nets in their stomachs–134 different types of nets between the two. In March 2013, scientists in southern Spain found nearly 18 pounds of plastic sheeting used to make greenhouses protruding from a dead sperm whale's stomach.
by Graham Pellitier
Lanternfish
Lanternfish are myctophids–called lanternfish because they are bioluminescent. Lanternfish lurk at 650 to 3,300 feet dep and rise at night to feast on zooplankton.
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Rarely longer than several inches, they make up about 65 percent of deep-sea fish biomass. They have been known to blanket waters above the continental shelf so densely that oceanography instruments misread them as sea floor. At night, they literally rise and shine in a vertical migration which is the largest daily biomass shift on earth. Lanternfish are food for numerous marine life including cod, salmon, shark, whales, and dolphins.
by Anna Huong
Plastic in the stomachs of Lanternfish
In a 2008 sampling study, Capt. Charles Moore found that 35 percent of the lanternfish in his night trawl sample from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch had ingested plastic. The photo on the left shows a portion of the trawl catch. Note the abundance of plastic to lanternfish. The photo on the right (magnified) shows he stomach contents of a single lanternfish: 83 plastic fragments compared with natural food.
Photographs by Captain Moore
Not only do plastics leach toxic chemicals, they also soak them up. Marine plastics have been found to contain levels of toxins up to one million times the concentration of the surrounding seawater.
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These toxins include ODE (a DDT derivative), PCBs, nonylphenols, and PAHs, all of which are endocrine disrupters. These harmful chemicals are known to cause lower sperm counts, dominance of female characteristics, infertility, preterm birth, and miscarriage. And the effects are not limited to the reproductive system. Endocrine disrupters have also been linked to obesity, type 2 diabetes, autism, ADHD, thyroid dysfunction, asthma and other autoimmune disorders, childhood cancer, and breast cancer.
Marine Debris
Marine debris is mostly man-made trash that is discarded into the ocean. This debris is 80 to 90 percent plastic. Most marine debris that floats ends up in a gyre, sometimes after drifting for as long as a decade. The predominate source of this debris is from improper waste disposal or the mismanagement of trash and manufacturing products. It originates on land at marinas, ports, rivers, harbors, docks, and even storm drains. The remainder is generated at sea from fishing vessels, stationary platforms, and cargo ships.
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Historically, marine debris did not accumulate because it was eventually broken down by microorganisms into carbon dioxide and water. Plastic, however, does not biodegrade. Bonded by heat and chemical reactions, plastic photo-degrades–a process in which it is broken down by sunlight into smaller and smaller pieces, all of which are still plastic.
Jelly Fish in Ocean Plastic, by Graham Pellitier
Ghost Nets
Ghost Nets is a term that includes lost and abandoned fishing gear. It is estimated that every year 640,000 tons of such gear is added to our oceans. This gear may continue to trap and kill sea life long after it is discarded.
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Data about deep water fisheries in the northeast Atlantic suggest that the catching efficiency of ghost nets stabilizes at 20 to 30 percent of commercial catch rates after 45 days and that some nets may continue to catch lesser amounts for more than eight years after being discarded.
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Nets, lines, and traps are attributed with entangling more than 136,000 seals and whales.
Sea Turtles & More
Four million tons of plastic debris float into our oceans each year affecting all manner of marine life. Over 260 species have ingested or become entangled in plastic. Sea turtles, whales, dolphins, seals, and sea lions are especially impacted.
Sea Turtle, by David Cushing
Into the Food Chain
Commingled Plastic & Plankton
Plankton are a diverse group of oceanic organisms that either float passively in the water or possess such limited powers of swimming that they are carried from place to place by the currents. Apart from bacteria, plankton are the most abundant life form on earth. They range in size from tiny microbes that are invisible to the naked eye to jellyfish that are meters in length. Plankton provide a crucial source of food underpinning the entire marine food chain.
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Commingled plastic-plankton is a danger because it forms an edible matrix for indiscriminate surface feeders, from salps to sea turtles to baleen whales. In an area sampled by oceanographer Charles Moore in 1999, the ration of dry weight plastic to plankton was 6:1 In a comparable study by Moore just ten years later, in 2009, it was 26:1.
by Graham Pellitier
Whale's Tale
Plastic on wood frame with fishing line
5ft x 3.5ft
Misty Mangiacapre
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Well-traveled whales have plenty of tales. This whale has kept 168 plastic bottles and 180 feet of fishing line from reaching the sea. THe disks were cut from soda bottles–six disks per bottle–that were reclaimed from UNCW's recycling bin. The artist then strung them together using fishing line that she also recovered and painstakingly detangled.
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Misty is a local marine scientist studying oil-derived toxic chemicals sorbed onto marine plastics and sediments. She earned a BS in marine biology from UNCW and is working towards a MS in marine chemistry. As an adventurer and surfer, she lives and breathes the sea, which drives her passion for ocean research and activism. Recently she began portraying her research through art.
FROM OUR MEDIA LOOP
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