June 26, 2019

Last month, in May 2019, a new Statue of Liberty Museum opened alongside Lady Liberty herself on Liberty Island in New York Harbor. The museum details the history of the Statue of Liberty, from conception and completion to its current state. It also explains the evolving ideals of American liberty since the statue was completed in 1886, from the woman suffrage and civil rights movements to the welcoming of millions of immigrants from around the world. The museum also houses memorabilia and items that have been replaced on the statue, such as the famous original torch.

People admire the views from atop the Statue of Liberty Museum on May 16, 2019, the museum’s opening day. Credit: © Maria Kraynova, Shutterstock

Every year, some 4.3 million people take ferries to visit Liberty Island and the former immigration station on nearby Ellis Island. (Together, the islands make up the Statue of Liberty National Monument.) However, since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the National Park Service has restricted the number of visitors who can enter the Statue of Liberty’s massive stone pedestal and travel up to the crown. A stand-alone museum, then, was created to accommodate all visitors to Liberty Island.

The Statue of Liberty was dedicated in 1886. Credit: © Matej Hudovernik, Shutterstock

After the the abolition of slavery and the end of the American Civil War in 1865, the French politician and historian Édouard Laboulaye proposed the construction of a joint French and American monument celebrating the ideals of liberty. Laboulaye’s friend, the sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi, chose Liberty Island (then called Bedloe’s Island) for the statue’s location, and he began designing the massive monument. Construction of the statue—fully named Liberty Enlightening the World—began in 1875 at a workshop in Paris, and work on the pedestal began in 1884 in the United States. The last pieces of the statue arrived in New York in 1885, and the fully constructed statue and pedestal were dedicated in 1886.

The story of Lady Liberty’s torch is an interesting one. The torch arrived in 1876, ahead of the rest of the statue. It was displayed—along with the arm holding it—in Philadelphia and then in New York City. Originally, the torch was not meant to be illuminated from within. The gilded copper of the torch would reflect sunlight during the day, and lights were to be installed below it. By the time it was placed atop the statue in 1886, however, portholes had been cut in the torch to allow interior arc lights to be seen at night. The portholes were soon replaced with windows, and a sky light was added. At that time, visitors could ascend to the dizzying heights of the torch.

In 1916, floodlights were installed at the base of the statue and the torch lighting system was changed. People were no longer allowed in the torch or on the torch’s observation deck. Hundreds of windows were cut in the copper flame of the torch, and powerful lamps inside lit the torch.

In 1984, age and weather damage forced the removal of the original torch. The new torch, in place since 1986, followed the statue’s original plans and has no windows. Its flame is covered with gold leaf and glows with reflected light. The old torch toured the United States and was displayed in the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal before finding a home in the new museum.

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The Statue of Liberty National Monument includes Ellis and Liberty islands in Upper New York Bay. Credit: WORLD BOOK map

The Statue of Liberty Museum is accessible to all visitors of Liberty Island, and the grass-covered green building incorporates an environmentally responsible design and sustainable practices. The museum offers audio tours in 12 languages and ties together the American and international pursuits of liberty.

The popularity and symbolism of the Statue of Liberty have led to its replication in many parts of the world. The most famous miniature copies of the statue stand in France (naturally), Norway (where much of the statue’s copper was mined), Brazil, China, Israel, and Japan. Lego-brick Statues of Liberty stand among other world monuments at Legoland parks in Denmark and other countries. Finally, a “lazy” Lady Liberty sits (rather than stands) atop a building in Lviv, Ukraine.

June 3, 2019

Last week, on May 30, the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort & Convention Center near Washington, D.C., ended in an unprecedented eight-way tie. The shocking group championship came after a last-minute rule change that limited the grueling competition to a 20th and final round, meaning that all spellers still standing would be declared champions. The winning spellers, all between 12 and 14 years old, labeled themselves the “octochamps.” They were: Rishik Gandhasri, Erin Howard, Abhijay Kodali, Shruthika Padhy, Rohan Raja, Christopher Serrao, Sohum Sukhatankar, and Saketh Sundar.

The 2019 Scripps National Spelling Bee “octochamps” were, left to right: Shruthika Padhy, Erin Howard, Rishik Gandhasri, Christopher Serrao, Saketh Sundar, Sohum Sukhatankar, Rohan Raja, and Abhijay Kodali. Credit: © Scripps National Spelling Bee

The official Scripps pronouncer, Jacques Bailly, announced the bee rule change as eight spellers remained at the conclusion of the 17th round of the championship final, which usually ends in a one-on-one spelling duel. Bailly acknowledged that organizers were running out of challenging words, and that any speller remaining after three additional rounds would be declared a champion. The shocking announcement drew cheers from the crowd, and from the spellers themselves, who realized that spelling three more tough words correctly—no easy task—would secure a piece of the championship.

After breezing through the 18th and 19th rounds, the eight finalists correctly spelled their title-clinching words to wrap up the competition. Gandhasri nailed auslaut (the final sound in a word or syllable); Howard spelled erysipelas (a skin disease); Sundar got bougainvillea (a tropical shrub); Padhy spelled out aiguillette (a shoulder cord); Sukhatankar eased through pendeloque (a pear-shaped ornament); Kodali walked through palama (the webbing on the feet of aquatic birds); Serrao figured out cernuous (of a plant); and Raja completed the perfect 20th round with odylic (relating to odyl, a force or natural power).

Co-champions have been declared in six previous National Spelling Bees, but never before had more than two competitors shared the annual title. Each of the octochamps earned the full winner’s share of $50,000 rather that having to divide the prize among themselves.

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The Scripps National Spelling Bee. Credit: Scripps National Spelling Bee

The annual English language Scripps National Spelling Bee begins with 11 million students from across the United States and its overseas territories as well from the Bahamas, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Japan, and South Korea. Regional competitions bring the spellers—who can compete through age 15 and eighth grade—to National Harbor in Oxon Hill, Maryland, just outside the U.S. capital, for the championship “Bee Week.” Preliminary rounds reduce the field (which this year included 562 students) to 16 excellent spellers, who gather on stage for the bee’s championship final, which is broadcast nationally on ESPN.

The first National Spelling Bee, a much smaller event organized by the Louisville, Kentucky, Courier-Journal newspaper, took place in 1925. The E. W. Scripps Company, based in nearby Cincinnati, Ohio, has sponsored the spelling bee since 1941. The competition was not held for three years during World War II (1939-1945).

May 8, 2019

Measles is making a comeback. The highly contagious disease is characterized by the spotty pink rash it causes over the body. Once rare, measles has come roaring back in the United States, as more than 750 cases were officially recorded in the first four months of 2019. That number is more than twice the amount of U.S. cases typically recorded in a full year. The new measles cases were primarily recorded in large outbreaks in the states of New York and Washington, but the disease has also appeared in 21 other states.

A health worker gives a measles vaccine to a young girl in Peshawar, Pakistan. Credit: © Asianet-Pakistan/Shutterstock

Measles chiefly strikes young children, but it is increasingly affecting adolescents and young adults. People who have the disease pass the virus by coughing and sneezing. People can spread the disease long before they realize they are ill. Three to five days after the first symptoms appear, faint pink spots break out over the body. Few people in the United States die of measles. But the disease is dangerous to those with a weakened immune system, and measles kills many undernourished children in other countries.

A child with measles shows the characteristic pink rash that spreads over the body. Credit: © Lowell Georgia, Photo Researchers

Public health experts are dismayed that measles has regained a foothold in the United States, where it was once eradicated. In 2000, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced that measles had been completely eliminated. This was an important public health achievement made possible by the widespread use of the highly effective measles vaccine. Of course, that did not mean that measles was completely gone. CDC officials still recorded a number of cases brought in from travelers—mostly from parts of Asia and Europe where measles is less well controlled. But, until recently, measles transmission in the United States had ended.

In recent years, however, a misinformed yet highly visible anti-vaccination (anti-vaxx for short) movement has led to fewer vaccinations, which has in turn led to the current measles outbreak. Anti-vaxx activists in the United States have launched a coordinated effort to convince parents not to vaccinate their children. They falsely claim that childhood vaccinations can cause a variety of health complications, autism, or even death. This disinformation is spread through websites, Facebook, and other social media. Medical professionals point out that anti-vaxx claims are often misleading and lack any credible or relevant evidence.

The anti-vaxx movement has spearheaded efforts to allow parents to opt out of mandatory vaccinations previously require to enroll their children in public schools. The latest measles outbreak is spread primarily though such unvaccinated students, who expose other children to measles and other preventable diseases, such as whooping cough.

Unvaccinated people, including those who may have a weakened immune system from chemotherapy, can be protected from measles through herd immunity. This term describes a population protected from a disease because high rates of vaccination make it impossible for the virus to spread. Although the measles virus can remain infectious for two or more hours outside the human body, the virus ultimately requires a human host to reproduce. If enough people in a population are vaccinated, the cycle of transmission is disrupted, and the virus will become extinct.

However, herd immunity does not work unless a great majority of the population is vaccinated. To achieve herd immunity for measles, at least 90 to 95 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated. In the past, this was achieved through mandatory vaccinations for school children. In recent years, however, increasing numbers of parents have requested vaccine exemptions for their children on ethical or religious grounds. Many states, cities, and school districts are now reconsidering allowing such exemptions.

April 19, 2019

Last month, on March 27, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in New York City named the computer scientists Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton, and Yann LeCun as the recipients of the annual A. M. Turing Award. Working both independently and together, Bengio, Hinton, and LeCun are considered fathers of the “Deep Learning Revolution” that has helped usher in a new era of artificial intelligence (AI).

Alan M. Turing (at right) was an English mathematician and computer pioneer. He made important contributions to the development of electronic digital computers.
Credit: Heritage-Images/Science Museum, London

The A. M. Turing Award is given to one or more individuals each year in recognition of contributions of lasting importance in the field of computing. Bengio, Hinton, and LeCun were rewarded for their conceptual and engineering breakthroughs that have made deep neural networks a critical component of computing. Neural networks are sets of algorithms, modeled loosely on the human brain, that are designed to recognize patterns. Neural networks can thus “learn” to “see,” “hear,” and “think” by differentiating among patterns. The networks are essential parts of driverless car technologies, automatic language translation programs, and automated personal assistants such as Alexa or Siri. They are also used in various forms of robotics as well as in automated stock trading and game playing programs. 

Artificial neural networks were introduced in the 1980′s, but by the early 2000′s, Bengio, Hinton and LeCun were among a small group who remained committed to furthering the technology. Their work—and the work of many others—has contributed to the recent boom in “deep learning” computer electronics. Bengio is a professor at the University of Montreal and scientific director at Mila, the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute. Hinton is vice president and engineering fellow of Google, chief scientific adviser of the Vector Institute in Toronto, and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. LeCun is a professor at New York University and vice president and chief AI scientist at Facebook.

The A. M. Turing Award is named after Alan Mathison Turing, a British mathematician and computer pioneer. Turing made key contributions to the development of electronic computers, including his work helping to build the first British electronic digital computer. In 1950, he proposed a test for determining if machines might be said to “think.” This test, now called the Turing test, is still central to discussions of artificial intelligence.

The first Turing Award was given to the American computer scientist Alan J. Perlis in 1966 for his role in developing influential computer-programming techniques. Since then, an award has been given every year. As of 2014, the award includes a $1 million cash prize. Bengio, Hinton and LeCun will formally receive the A.M. Turing Award at ACM’s annual awards banquet on June 15, 2019, in San Francisco, California.

April 12, 2019

On Wednesday, April 10, scientists with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) team published a photograph of the invisible—or at least the area around the invisible. The EHT captured an image of an event horizon (the surface of a black hole) for the first time. The EHT is a global collection of radio telescopes that work together as one giant telescope. As its name implies, the EHT was created to observe an event horizon, a mission that has at last been accomplished. The EHT began its quest in 2006, and has since greatly expanded its network.

On April 10, 2019, scientists with the Event Horizon Telescope team released this first ever image of a black hole—or at least the event horizon surrounding a black hole. Credit: EHT Collaboration/ESO

A black hole is a region of space whose gravitational force is so strong that nothing can escape from it, not even light. The event horizon is the “point of no return” for a black hole: Anything that crosses this horizon is sucked into the black hole forever. Because light cannot escape a black hole, all black holes are invisible and cannot be directly photographed. But physicists predicted that an image of the area surrounding a black hole would reveal a halo of high-energy matter and radiation around a circular shadow.

The boxed area in this image shows the black hole at the core of the M87 galaxy.
Credit: NASA/CXC/Villanova University/J. Neilsen

Heino Falcke, a German astrophysicist now at Radboud University in the Netherlands, discovered that this halo would emit radio waves detectable on Earth. He helped found the EHT to photograph event horizons through these radio waves. The collection of ground-based radio telescopes participating in the EHT project stretches from Hawaii to Europe and all the way south to Antarctica. Several dozen of the world’s leading observatories and universities contribute to the project.

The EHT observed a supermassive black hole at the center of a huge galaxy called Messier 87, or M87, some 55 million lightyears from Earth. A supermassive black hole is a type of black hole with a mass from 1 million to billions of times the mass of our solar system’s  sun. Many galaxies have a supermassive black hole near their centers. The supermassive black hole at the center of M87 is one of the largest ever discovered, some 6.5 billion times the mass of our sun. The diameter of its event horizon is roughly the size of our entire solar system.

It took an enormous effort to produce the image released this April. Two years ago, in April 2017, eight radio telescopes of the EHT simultaneously observed the M87 black hole for 10 days. The observations had to be precisely synchronized (scheduled) by atomic clock to combine and match up their images. In total, the observatories collected more than 5 petabytes of data, equal to the text of 88 million print editions of the World Book Encyclopedia. (A petabyte is 1,000 terabytes. A terabyte is a measure of computer information or memory equal to about 1 trillion bytes). This was so much information that it was faster to fly the data by airplane between the laboratories that analyzed the data than to transfer it over the internet. An American computer scientist named Katie Bouman developed a special algorithm to combine the data from the eight telescopes into a single image.

Just like the detection of gravitational waves three years ago, this work promises to revolutionize astronomy. Each year, new observatories join the EHT, strengthening its resolution (image sharpness). The EHT has observed black holes other than the one at the core of M87, including the one at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy, Sagittarius A*. EHT scientists think they will be able to produce an image of that event horizon soon. Scientists might also be able to sharpen the image of the M87 black hole in the coming months.

March 4, 2019

Yesterday, March 3, was World Wildlife Day, an international celebration of the Earth’s flora and fauna sponsored by the United Nations (UN). This year’s theme, “Life Below Water: For People and Planet,” singled out the crucial ecosystems and marine life of the world’s oceans. Life on Earth depends on the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans.

In 2019, the theme of World Wildlife Day is “Life Below Water: For People and Planet.” Credit: © World Wildlife Day

The first UN World Wildlife Day was celebrated on March 3, 2013, the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1973. The treaty—which went into effect in 1975—aims to control trade in wild animals and plants, their parts, and products derived from them. Over 170 countries around the world have joined the treaty. CITES forbids commercial international trade in certain endangered species, and it regulates trade in other species that might otherwise become endangered. Nevertheless, international wildlife trade continues to put many species at risk.

This year’s World Wildlife Day theme drew particular attention to the diverse animal and plant species that inhabit the world’s oceans. It also highlighted the importance of the oceans themselves, which—aside from providing energy, food, livelihoods, medicines, natural resources, recreation, sediments, and transportation—also absorb about 30 percent of the carbon dioxide produced by humans, buffering the impacts of global warming.

Unfortunately, many ocean waters are polluted, and plastic marine debris in particular is poisoning the world’s waters and killing marine wildlife. Overfishing and other forms of exploitation are also reducing marine wildlife populations, as are the losses of coastal habitats and the effects of climate change. The goal of “Life Below Water: For People and Planet” was to raise awareness of the importance of marine life and to instruct people on responsible and sustainable behavior that can limit the many perils facing the world’s oceans.

February 22, 2019

In honor of Black History Month, World Book looks at African American poet, playwright, and social worker Useni Eugene Perkins. As a writer, he is best known for his 1975 children’s poem “Hey Black Child.” Perkins composed this lyrical poem to celebrate black children in particular. However, the verse attempts to inspire all young people to dream big dreams and work to achieve their goals in life.

Hey Black Child by Useni Eugene Perkins and Bryan Collier. Credit: © Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Perkins’s poem was originally written as lyrics for a song in his children’s play Black Fairy (1975), but it quickly gained popularity as a stand-alone work in black classrooms and homes. Over the years, confusion has often surrounded the authorship of “Hey Black Child.” The poem has mistakenly been attributed to such African American writers as Maya Angelou and Countee Cullen. The popularity of the poem led to the creation of the 2017 picture book Hey Black Child, illustrated by Bryan Collier. The book helped to end the confusion over the poem’s creation.

Credit: © African American History Month

Eugene Perkins was born on Sept. 13, 1932, in Chicago, Illinois. He later added Useni as his first name. Perkins attended George Williams College, earning a B.S. degree in group social work in 1961 and an M.S. degree in administration in 1964. He has spent most of his adult life as a social worker in Chicago.

Throughout his life, Perkins has made contributions to African American poetry and drama, particularly works for children. He was a leader of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960’s and 1970’s, which rejected the literary forms and values of white culture. His poetry has been collected in Black Is Beautiful (1968), When You Grow Up: Poems for Children (1982) and Midnight Blues in the Afternoon and Other Poems (1984). He has written plays about such important black leaders in history as Steve Biko, W. E. B. Du Bois, Leadbelly, Paul Robeson, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, among others. Some of his plays for children have been collected in Black Fairy and Other Plays (1993).

November 7, 2018

November is Native American Heritage Month in the United States. To celebrate the month, World Book looks at the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) in Washington, D.C. The NMAI is devoted to the histories and cultures of the native peoples of the Americas. The museum works in cooperation with Native American communities to present objects, exhibits, and artworks of historical significance. The museum’s collections also showcase modern Native American arts and cultures. The NMAI, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, has three facilities: the main museum campus on the National Mall; the George Gustav Heye Center in New York City; and the Cultural Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland.

The National Museum of the American Indian is devoted to the history and culture of the native peoples of North, Central, and South America. The museum’s building, in Washington, D.C., has smooth, rounded forms that were inspired in part by windswept rock formations. Many Native American architects and designers worked on the design. Credit: Pixabay

George Gustav Heye, an American art collector, established the Museum of the American Indian in New York City in 1916. In 1989, the United States Congress created the NMAI and moved Heye’s collection to the Smithsonian. The museum opened in 2004.

November is Native American Heritage Month in the United States. Credit: © Native American Heritage Month

This November, the NMAI is featuring an exhibit called “Patriot Nations: Native Americans in Our Nation’s Armed Forces.” The exhibit details the sometimes-conflicted participation of Native Americans in the U.S. military since the days of the American Revolution (1775-1783). It also details the new National Native American Veterans Memorial that will soon grace the museum’s grounds.

Native American Heritage Month began as American Indian Day in 1916, when certain states began honoring Native Americans with a day each May. President George H. W. Bush approved a joint resolution of Congress designating the first Native American Heritage Month in November 1990. The month honors all the native peoples of the United States, including Alaskan natives and Pacific Islanders.

October 5, 2018

Every year in the first week of October, the Nobel Foundation in Sweden awards Nobel Prizes to artists, economists, scientists, and peace workers who–in keeping with the vision of chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel–have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind. On Monday, the foundation awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly to scientists James P. Allison of the United States and Tasuku Honjo of Japan for their research on immunotherapy that stimulates the body’s immune system to recognize and attack cancer cells. Allison and Honjo helped develop powerful new therapies to treat, and in some instances cure, certain types of cancer.

Nobel Prize medal (Credit: Nobel Foundation)

James P. Allison is with the department of immunology at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. Tasuku Honjo is a professor in the department of immunology and genomic medicine at Kyoto University.

On Tuesday, the Nobel Foundation announced the prize for physics had been awarded to three scientists: Arthur Ashkin (from the United States), Gérard Mourou (France), and Donna Strickland (Canada) for their groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics. Ashkin invented “optical tweezers,” an instrument that uses lasers to manipulate such tiny objects as atoms, viruses, and living cells. Mourou and Strickland worked together to generate the shortest and most intense laser pulses ever created. This technology has many useful applications and is the basis for LASIK eye surgery. The pair published an article on the laser research in 1985, when Mourou was teaching at the University of Rochester in New York and Strickland was a graduate student there.

Arthur Ashkin’s prize-winning work was conducted while he worked at Bell Laboratories in Holmdel, New Jersey. At age 96, he is the oldest Nobel Prize recipient ever. Gérard Mourou is currently with the École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. Donna Strickland is associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Waterloo in Canada. Strickland is just the third woman in 117 years to win the Nobel Prize in physics. Polish-born scientist Marie Curie shared the prize in 1903 for her research on radiation. In 1963, German-born scientist Maria Goeppert Mayer shared the prize for her research on atomic nuclei.

On Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2018, the Nobel Foundation announced that Americans Frances H. Arnold and George P. Smith would share the prize for chemistry with Sir Gregory Winter of the United Kingdom for using directed evolution to synthesize proteins. This process mimics natural selection, the driving force of biological evolution, in a laboratory to create novel proteins with useful properties.

Arnold is currently a professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena. She is the fifth woman to win the chemistry prize. Smith is a former professor at the University of Missouri in Columbia. Winter is affiliated with the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England.

September 21, 2018

In the Pacific Ocean, floating plastic pollution has collected into a giant area of marine debris known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). Marine debris consists of garbage dumped directly into the ocean or carried there by waterways. Such debris can injure animals or make them ill. It can also poison and bury marine habitat. The GPGP, also called the Pacific trash vortex, spans an astounding 600,000 square miles (1.6 million square kilometers) of ocean surface—an area more than twice the size of Texas and nearly three times the size of France.

A member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) helps disentangle an albatross chick from plastic debris in the northwestern Hawaiian islands. Credit: Ryan Tabata, NOAA

The GPGP is actually two large fields of marine debris, a western patch near Japan and an eastern patch near Hawaii. The fields are linked by a convergence zone where warm South Pacific waters meet cooler Arctic waters. There, currents and winds carry garbage from one patch to the other. Circular currents move clockwise around the patches, creating a massive vortex that keeps the debris from scattering to other parts of the planet. Unfortunately, all ocean waters have similar pollution problems, and the ocean plastic plague is not limited to the vast Pacific.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch includes two general areas of massed marine debris collected and held in place by ocean currents. Credit: NOAA Marine Debris Program

The GPGP contains an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of fishing nets, glass, light metals, ropes, and other discarded rubbish. Most GPGP debris is washed out to sea from Asia and North America. Other debris is left behind by boaters, oil rigs, and cargo ships. The majority of this debris is made of plastic, and it gathers in large patches because it floats and much of it is not biodegradable. Most plastics do not wear down or decompose; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces. 

The GPGP is visible in large swaths on the ocean surface, but much of it exists as microplastics in what appears to be cloudy or milky-colored water. Oceanographers and ecologists recently learned that only a fraction of marine debris floats near the surface, meaning that the deeper waters and sea floors beneath the GPGP are also heavily polluted.

Plastics in particular are a problem because of their omnipresence: they are simply everywhere. Most plastic objects are easy to spot, but plastics exist where you might not expect them: the synthetic chewy polymer in gum, the microbeads in soaps and gels, and even the microfibers of fleece or nylon clothing. Plastics are cheap to manufacture, so cheap, in fact, that many plastics are only used once. Such single-use plastics are the greatest threats to the world’s oceans. People typically use plastic bags, coffee stirrers, forks and spoons, straws, soda and water bottles, and food packaging only once and then throw them away. These items end up in landfills, in lakes and rivers, and in the oceans, and they do harm everywhere. Most of these items can be recycled, but only about 10 percent of plastic is ever reused. Scientists estimate that humans discard about 300 million tons (275 million metric tons) of plastic every year. Of that amount, some 9 million tons (8.1 million metric tons) finds its way into the world’s oceans.

Plastic pollution has a dire effect on marine wildlife, killing hundreds of thousands of fish, sea birds, sea turtles, seals, whales, and other smaller animals each year. Larger animals become entangled in plastic, trapping them or hindering their movement, and they drown or die of starvation. Sea turtles eat plastic bags, mistaking them for their favorite food, jellyfish. The bags suffocate the turtles or kill them by blocking their digestive systems. Sea birds such as albatrosses often mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks, which then starve or die of ruptured organs. Clouds of microplastics can kill by blocking sunlight: phytoplankton and other types of algae (a large base of the ocean food chain) depend on photosynthesis to survive. Microplastics also effect small fish and carnivorous plankton that mistakenly eat the synthetic particles: the animals either die or pass the plastic up the food chain. Researchers have found high numbers of plastic fibers inside food fish sold at markets—so yes, people too end up eating indigestible and often toxic plastic.

So there is an ocean plastic plague out there, and it is spreading every day: what is being done about it? At sea, unfortunately, little is happening. The GPGP and many other ocean garbage patches around the world lie in international waters. A nation’s territorial waters extend only 12 nautical miles (14 miles or 22 kilometers) from the coast. Most nations observe this limit to regulate commercial fishing, navigation, shipping, and use of the ocean’s natural resources. While some nations claim territorial waters much farther out than 12 nautical miles, none wants the responsibility or expense of cleaning the pollution that collects out there. International waters are exploited and heavily trafficked, but garbage patches are largely ignored beneath the prows of money-making ships.

A tugboat deploys The Ocean Cleanup’s first ocean-sweeping floater to collect plastic marine debris on Sept. 15, 2018. Credit: The Ocean Cleanup

Individual efforts are helping, however. Dutch inventor Boyan Slat recently founded The Ocean Cleanup, an organization that has developed an ocean-sweeping floater to collect plastic garbage. The floater—made from a durable, recyclable plastic called high density polyethylene (HDPE)—is a 1,000-foot- (600-meter- ) long horseshoe that collects plastics in its mouth and in screens that drape beneath the surface. The screens are made from a tightly woven textile impenetrable to marine life, preventing animals from becoming ensnared. The plastics are collected, extracted, and either recycled, resold, or disposed of properly. The floaters will be placed in low-trafficked sea zones, illuminated and equipped with radar and Global Positioning System (GPS) beacons to avoid collisions with ships. The first of these ocean-sweeping floaters began Pacific sea trials in September 2018, and The Ocean Cleanup hopes to have a fleet of 60 such cleaning systems by 2020. The lofty goal is to reduce the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by 50 percent by 2025.

Other organizations doing what they can to help include the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the Plastic Oceans Foundation. Other inventive forms of cleanup include introducing plastic-eating bacteria (a slow cure that could create other problems) and small scale “SeaBins” that float in harbors and filter out floating garbage. 

As Benjamin Franklin famously said, however, an ounce of prevention is worth of a pound of cure. Stopping the ocean plastic plague—and all other forms of pollution—depends on our habits and behaviors at home. Governments must encourage recycling and develop better waste management systems. Industry must switch to more environmentally friendly plastics capable of natural decomposition. Fishing crews can help by collecting plastic caught in their nets and returning it to shore for processing. Individuals can help by reducing the use of disposable plastics and products with plastic microbeads or microfibers. If plastics must be used, recycle or reuse whenever possible. And, as always and with everything, never litter.