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Marine Debris is a huge burden to people living on small islands under their restricted conditions such as a shortage of manpower and a low budget. However, many people are trying to remove trash washed ashore to protect marine animals and the ocean eco-sytem.
The Marine Debris Task Management Program is conducted by the Miyakojima Project to help small islands and less populated remote coastline regions of Southeast Asia.
We are focusing on the following points to organize a multilateral task force to reduce the amount of marine debris around the east Asian nations before they flow into the Great Pacific Gyre.
| 1. |
Increase effective removal by focusing the cleanup work by narrowing down the cleanup target range to Highly Hazardous Marine Debris only, listed as “PRIORITY No. 1”. |
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Simplify the incineration or other safe disposal process for people of small islands and rural areas. This effort is to increase participating regions and for effective cleanup results. |
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Collect and provide the most advanced technical information for a safe disposal process of marine debris for regions that cannot afford non dioxin bleaching incinerator facilities. |
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Continue beach monitoring followed by an international shoreline assessment process. |
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Monitor floating debris on ocean currents and find regional characteristics following the marine debris monitoring and assessment standards |
Even in small islands, past beach cleanups were mostly coordinated to eliminate all trash that washed ashore on popular beaches. Usually, beach cleanups are conducted only once or twice a year as an event or for public awareness. With these inconsistent cleanups, ocean debris that was once washed ashore will once again flow back into the ocean by the next high tide because it is almost impossible to collect all the trash on the beach continuously, both physically and financially.
The financial situation is another aspect that is slowing down the cleanup project. At the local level, the government is unable to build proper trash incineration facilities that can burn petroleum-based products such as plastic bags, vinyl, Styrofoam, fishing nets and gears in a safe manner.
Even if they could successfully build a small-scale non dioxin bleaching incinerator facility within their budget (still costing over $120,000), the processing volume may still be very small with only 4-6 tons per month. This situation makes beach cleanup activities very limited.
In addition to this, many of the local island governments are suffering from financial collapse, and may not be able to allocate enough fuel money to keep running the high cost dioxin-free incinerator.
Based on these realities, the Miyakojima Project formed the Marine Debris Task Management Program to conduct a more realistic and multilateral approach for the reduction of marine debris before they threaten marine life. We will directly appeal to the local government of islands located within the gateway area of Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and other island nation in the region.
We would like for them to participate in this program for an increased effect.
For this to occur, we would like to apply a new system of picking up beach trash by a narrowed down cleanup target range of Highly Hazardous Marine Debris only, listed as “PRIORITY No. 1”.
By applying this system, we can:
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Focus on picking up trash that has higher risk on marine life before they are returned to the ocean by the next high tide. |
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Collect more hazardous trash and debris efficiently |
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Increase the volume of incineration of high risked trash by consolidating pickup items. |
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Increase energy efficiency of the incinerator by burning petroleum-based materials only.
Because beach trash normally included wood and seaweeds heavily soaked in salt water, combustion efficiency had drastically decreased and more energy was needed to burn the mixed materials. |
| Why We Do This at Miyako Island |
Miyako Island is geographically located at the junction of two ocean currents heading north (Exb. 1).
One of those currents is the Taiwan Warm Current in the East China Sea which travels north alongside mainland China.
The other is the largest current in the world called the Kuroshio (Black current). It starts east of the Philippines, near the North Equatorial and travels all the way up to the west coast of Canada and United States. After 4.5 years, the current flows back to its original ocean.
Consequently, the drifting trash of the south-east Asian region flows past Taiwan and accumulates near the sea of the Ryukyu basin, including Miyako Island.
Therefore, Miyako Island is one of the best places to test out this “Exit Survey Base at the Gateway” for Drifting Ocean Trash (Marine Debris) before they are discharged into the Pacific Ocean. If not, drifting debris will travel to mainland Japan and flow to beaches of the Pacific Northwest of Canada and to the US after two years.
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| Exb. 1 Kuroshio Tidal Stream near Okinawa |
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| Exb. 2 Kuroshio and North Pacific Gyre |
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| Highly Hazardous Marine Debris Categorized as “PRIORITY No. 1” |
| The following are the groups of most hazardous, high risk particles of marine debris ranked as “PRIORITY No. 1”. They are urgently in need of being picked from beaches before they return to the ocean by the next high tide. |
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 Fishing Gears: |
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1. |
Fishing Nets |
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2. |
Fishing Lines |
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3. |
Fishing Floats and Quills |
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Crab Pot and Traps |
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5. |
Ropes |
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6. |
PP Fish Box and Formfilled Fish Box |
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| Plastic Products: |
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6 Pack Holders (for beverages) |
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7. |
Plastic Bags |
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8. |
Caps, Lids, Pull Tabs |
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9. |
Plastic Cups, Plates, Knives, Forks, Spoons |
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10. |
Food Wrappers, Containers |
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11. |
Straws, Stirrers |
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12. |
Beverage Bottles |
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13. |
Balloons |
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14. |
Toys |
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| .Other Debris: |
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15. |
Cigarette Filters |
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16. |
Cigarette Lighters |
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17. |
Tires |
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18. |
Syringes (Mostly to protect local children and swimmers.) |
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19. |
Glass Beverage Bottles (Mostly to protect local children and swimmers from injuries) |
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| Why We Need to Remove Marine Debris |
| You will be able to see why we need to remove these marine debris when you look at the following pictures that are introduced on the website of NOAA |
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| These Photos are Copyrighted by NOAA |
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After the Storm at Miyako Island Beach
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| 24.901599 , 125.272572 |
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