and
But this is a very, very important place.
Just because we're going to sing,
I think the most alarming thing is just the amount of plastic pollution we're finding
for the location that we're in.
You know you look around and it's crystal clear blue water, white sand, teeming wildlife
and then next to it always plastic, with a lot of it being everyday consumer items.
And it's just crazy because we're in a marine reserve that's 400km offshore in an area that
doesn't have any human contact.
And so to find the amount of plastic pollution we have found out here just goes to show that
there are far greater consequences of using plastic than most of us will ever see or witness.
And so to find the amount of plastic pollution we have found out here just goes to show
that there are far greater consequences of using plastic than most of us will ever see
or witness.
And so to find the amount of plastic pollution we have found out here just goes to show that
there are far greater consequences of using plastic than most of us will ever see or witness.
For me this trip it's been all about the seabirds, these incredible populations of majestic
animals that are living out here uninhibited, hundreds of kilometres from land, but their
habitat is not without the impact of man, there's plastic everywhere.
Scientists are now telling us that 90% of seabirds have plastic in their stomachs and
by 2050 that figure is going to be 99.9% and we know that over a million of these innocent
creatures are dying every year from plastic.
Plastic is everywhere, we use it quite often for a very short time and then it goes away,
but where is away?
In the last handful of decades we've found our oceans are filling up with plastic, huge
accumulation zones in our oceans known as gyres where plastic swirls around, a memory
of a life it once lived.
But plastics don't ever go away, being made from petroleum, they don't biodegrade, they
only degrade being exposed to the light where they photodegrade and to the motion of the
ocean breaking apart into ever tinier pieces known as microplastics.
Some we can see but as they get smaller and smaller they become invisible, but they're
not invisible to everything, small fish, large fish, plankton, birds, they're all ingesting
this plastic and when that happens the chemicals in the plastic and absorbed onto the plastic
become available to transfer across the tissue.
This is bioaccumulation and who's at the top of the food chain?
It's us, we've all got a role to play.
If we care about the health of our oceans and we care about the health of our species
then we have to address plastic pollution, we have to do it now.
I've been working in ocean conservation for over 20 years now and I've been diving all
over the world and even like way out here in the Coral Sea I'm seeing change to marine
life and marine ecosystems like coral bleaching and overfishing and we need more protected
areas out there, marine protected areas to give the oceans a better chance.
To respond to the issue of plastic pollution in Australia CSIRO are conducting a range
of scientific experiments to estimate how much plastic is actually out there in the
marine environment and to quantify its impacts on wildlife.
We're conducting net trolls to collect microplastics off the surface of the ocean, we're doing
this in conjunction with beach surveys to compare the onshore and offshore debris.
We'll use this data to estimate plastic loads and abundance in the environment, we'll also
look at wind and oceanographic models and have a look at where the debris may have come
from and where it potentially can go.
Microplastics in the marine environment have the potential to be ingested by fish and other
marine life.
We conduct net groups to quantify microplastics in gastrointestinal tract and analyze the ingested
plastics in laboratories to find what contaminants are being transferred into our fish.
Tengaroa Blue has been running for over 10, 11 years or so now and basically we do marine
debris cleanups around the coastline but the overall issue is the data, the information
so the Tengaroa Blue catch cry is if all we ever do is clean up that's all we are going
to do.
So that database is a hugely important weapon when it comes to proving what's going on in
the environment.
Now once we enter that data into the database that can be used then to talk to federal government
with the information that we do have on fishing gear, state government, right down to local
councils to try and stop or reduce the amount of marine debris entering the environment.
So we've arrived back here at Cairns and we've got about 2.2 tonne of marine debris on the
dock here.
About 17 cubic metres worth, it's just a phenomenal amount of stuff.
We have everything from ropes, nets, hundreds of fishing boats, thousands of plastic waters,
hundreds of thongs, it's just an amazing incredible amount of debris.
I'm sure it's heartbreaking to see how much plastic we pull off these remote islands but
let's look at the positives.
There is no better time to act on this issue than now.
We have the education, we have the knowledge, we have the political will.
Let's transform the conversation and single use plastics, let's stop plastic pollution.
We've got a choice.
We can sit and watch the natural world fall apart right in front of our eyes and say,
it's too hard, it's too big of an issue to fix, or we can get inspired, we can make
changes to our personal lives which we can control and encourage and inspire our neighbours
through our actions which will hopefully inspire their neighbours until before we know it we
have made a difference.
We can stop plastic pollution and the solution lies in every single one of us.
We can stop plastic pollution and the solution lies in every single one of us.
We can stop plastic pollution and the solution lies in every single one of us.
We can stop plastic pollution and the solution lies in every single one of us.
