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Marine Debris |
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| Drifting Ocean Trash Problem |
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After the Storm:
The beaches of Miyako Island are filled with large amounts of drifting ocean trash after every storm as shown in this picture. Trash includes plastic bottles, plastic household products, fishing gears, and occasionally untreated medical wastes including syringes often times come from China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea and other Asian nations. |
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When we see drifting trash wash ashore on Miyako Island, we realize how this island is surrounded by many Asian countries.
We can see Chinese characters and Korean Alphabets on the bottles and products, and many other trash can identify the nation of products such as Vietnam, Philippines and Taiwan.
On our costal line we can find a wide variety of waste products such as fishing gears, water bottles, Styrofoam containers, shopping bags and ship equipments including life saving jacket.
Our largest concern is how to handle those vast amounts of drifting trash. If not clean our beach, many of these trash will returned to the ocean by the next high tide and keep damaging the ocean eco system and creatures.
Drifting trash (marin debris) are the largest burden to people of small islands. (Oshiro 9/20/2009) |
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September 19 was the “International Costal Cleanup Day” sponsored by Ocean Conservancy, which is a organization that researches and protects the oceanic environment of the world.
Its headquarter is located in WashingtonDC. This event made its 25th anniversary this year and volunteers from 104 countries assembled at seashores to cleanup. Miyakojima Project was registered this year as a local coordinator of Miyako Island and participated in this year’s costal cleanup.
In corporation with Ocean Conservancy, we would like to continue research to collect sufficient data of drifting trash.
(Oshiro 9/20/2009) |
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In 2009, MiyakojimaCity was granted 10 million yen ($111,000) of financial assistance from the Japanese government for purchasing a non-air-polluting drifting trash incineration system. This incinerator was enabled by newly established measures to support the local government’s efforts to clean the beach.
However, this potable incinerator system has limited capability and may not be able to incinerate all the drifting trash. We need to look into better systems to deal with this matter.
(Shimoji 11/06/2009) |
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As seen from a point of tidal streams, Miyako Island is geographically located at the junction of two ocean currents heading north. One current is the Taiwan Warm Current in the East China Sea which travels north along the mainland China continent, and the other is the largest current in the world called Kuroshio (Black current) which starts at the east of Philippines, near the North Equatorial and travels all the way up to the west coast of Canada and United States, and flows back to the original ocean after 4.5 years.
Consequently, the drifting trashes of the south-east Asian region are flowing past Taiwan and accumulated near the sea of Ryukyu basin including Miyako Island.
By this reason, Miyako Island is one of the best places for sampling as an Exit Survey Base of the Drifting Ocean Trashes (Marine Debris) before discharge to the Pacific Ocean because these drifting trashes will travel to mainland Japan and go up all the way to the Northwest Pacific beach of Canada and US after two years. (Miyakojima Project 12/19/2009) |
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OCEAN
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September 25, 2010 is International Costal Cleanup day.
As the Areal Coodinator, Miyakojima Project is also participating in this event with Ocean Conservancy. As soon as we set the schedule for the cleanup, we will inform you immediately. (Oshiro 7/08/2010) |
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