Comments on: Greenpeace needs remedial oceanography

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 02:25:34 +0000

It stirkes me that they are specifically speaking about the stable high pressure weather regime in the pacific and refering to that as the gyre, while we are coming at this from an oceanographic point of view and so when one says the “Pacific Gyre”, we naturally think of the ocean current system, and the resulting gyre, instead.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:19:16 +0000

Just saw from the ORV Alguita website an image of the high and low weather cells for the North Pacific (where they are currently documenting the plastic gyre) It bears a striking resemblance to the GP map.

By: Miriam Goldstein

Miriam Goldstein — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 17:34:18 +0000

Eoin – Thanks very much for stopping by and answering my question. I’m not a physical oceanographer and I may be missing something, but I still don’t understand why it is useful to Greenpeace to depict the currents by Japan this way. The Kuroshio is an important source of plastic to the North Pacific (see Yamashita & Tanimura 2007 in Mar. Pollut. Bull.) but depicting it going the wrong way makes it appear that trash would be transported to the southwest instead of entering the North Pacific. This doesn’t seem to be a useful generalization. Thanks again for your reply.

[cross-posted at Greenpeace forum]

By: Eoin Dubsky

Eoin Dubsky — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 13:42:54 +0000

Hi Miriam,
The animation is crude, that’s true. I replied to your post on the Greenpeace Forum, but here it is again for completeness:

I work in Greenpeace, and I’ve run your comment by one of our scientists who worked aboard the Greenpeace ship Esperanza to highlight the issue of plastic debris in the world’s oceans. Here’s what Adam says:

The animation is very crude. However, we felt that it served the purpose of demonstrating how plastic makes it’s way to the Trash Vortex.
The real situation with surface currents is much more complex, indeed so complex that it’s finer points are not well understood. Largely influenced by the wind, surface currents vary both with local weather conditions and throughout annual cycles (climatic weather patterns). Modeling the gyre has been the subject of scientific publications however the detail involved goes well beyond that which is useful for giving people a general idea of the phenomenon- which was our intention.
[edited for cut-and-paste error - MG]

By: Miriam Goldstein

Miriam Goldstein — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:21:49 +0000

I felt bad mocking them without telling them, so I posted a polite comment on their forum. We'll see what happens. And Kevin - hippie juice? hehehehehehe.

By: kevin z

kevin z — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 05:17:14 +0000

Dude, this is a serious f-up. They need to lay off the hippie juice and get their stuff together if they want to be taken seriously as an organization that wants to be respected by several different audiences.

That kind of error is unforgivable and misleading.

By: Miriam Goldstein

Miriam Goldstein — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 20:15:02 +0000

Yeah, I think somebody accidentally grabbing high and low pressure systems instead of currents is a good guess. Trying is good, but major errors like this probably hurt Greenpeace more than the cute animation helps.

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 04:55:39 +0000

Ummm.

Those are supposed to be ocean currents? Maybe someone grabbed predominant air currents or high and low weather cells for the animation???

I love how the currents coming down through the Bering Straights return through the mountains of British Columbia and what I assume they intend to be the California Current spends most of it’s time between Sacramento and Reno.

At least they are trying.