Adrift away...
Want to know where your message in a bottle will turn up or track down the path of local floating pollution? Welcome to adrift, a website inspired by research into ocean circulation by Dr Erik Van Sebille and the delightful book Moby Duck about the true adventure of 28,800 rubber ducks lost at sea.
Here you can explore how all kinds of objects drift through the ocean - from rubber duckies to plastic pollution - and where each object might end up if it is washed out to sea from your beach.
The website uses a scientific method that is based on observed tracks revealed by buoys in the Global Drifter Program and other scientific research in this field. On this website you can see where ocean-going debris travelled after the Fukushima disaster or the path rubber ducks may have taken after the famous Friendly Floaties spill revealed in Moby Duck.
Happy Exploring, it is time to drift away!
Our oceans make up 70 per cent of the Earth's surface and are in constant motion. Driven by the sun and the wind our oceans develop mighty currents and eddies, some of which can take centuries to loop through all of our planet's ocean basins.
These currents also move through three dimensions. Many rise from the deep ocean near coastlines while other currents descend to the deepest parts of the ocean. These vertically descending currents are often, but not always, in the middle of the ocean in regions known as the five great gyres. These gyres are giant vortices spanning the whole ocean basin where water at the surface slowly spirals inwards until it sinks.
However, almost all plastic materials and lighter than water objects (such as those messages in a bottles) stay on the surface.
Since the late 1970s, ocean scientists have tracked drifting buoys but it wasn't until 1982 the World Climate Research Programme put forward the idea of a standardised global array of drifting buoys. These buoys float with the currents just like plastics except - like Twitter from the sea - they send a short message to scientists every six hours about where they are and the conditions in that location.
With this information, we have been able to create a statistical model of the surface pathways of our oceans. The Adrift website uses this model and generates an animation of the likely path and destination of floating debris over a ten year period into the future.
For the full details go to Erik Van Sebille's webpage or the paper Origin, dynamics and evolution of ocean garbage patches from observed surface drifters. If you have any further questions you can contact Erik van Sebille
Published on Jan 8, 2013
Just how much plastic is there floating around in our oceans? Dr Erik van Sebille from UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre has completed a study of ocean "garbage patches", and has found that in some regions the amount of plastic outweighs that of marine life.
MORE INFO:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7...
UNSW Climate Change Research Centre:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7...
link to interactive map here >>>
http://adrift.org.au/map?lat=34.6&lng=-141¢er=-122.5
Duckies and Other Plastic
We show you a cute rubber duckie on the map, but the experiment you are doing when you click on the map is actually very sad. You are investigating how plastics move in the ocean.
The plastic litter is one of the biggest problems in our ocean. It can entangle marine animals, or they can mistake it for food and eat it. If that happens, the plastic gets into the food-chain, and in particular the chemicals in the plastics can be very harmful.
Fortunately, there are many groups of people that want to do something about this problem. They for instance clean up beaches, or try to reduce the amount of plastics we use in our daily live.
So, if you want to help out yourself, why not contact one of the organisations below?
5 Gyres
Tangaroa Blue
Surfrider Foundation
Plastic Oceans
Adrift.org.au is intended as an educational site. It should not be used for any policy decisions and comes without any warranty. Any inquiries should be directed to Dr Erik van Sebille at the University of New South Wales. Support for this site is provided by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and the NeCTAR Research Cloud.
Want to know where your message in a bottle will turn up or track down the path of local floating pollution? Welcome to adrift, a website inspired by research into ocean circulation by Dr Erik Van Sebille and the delightful book Moby Duck about the true adventure of 28,800 rubber ducks lost at sea.
Here you can explore how all kinds of objects drift through the ocean - from rubber duckies to plastic pollution - and where each object might end up if it is washed out to sea from your beach.
The website uses a scientific method that is based on observed tracks revealed by buoys in the Global Drifter Program and other scientific research in this field. On this website you can see where ocean-going debris travelled after the Fukushima disaster or the path rubber ducks may have taken after the famous Friendly Floaties spill revealed in Moby Duck.
Happy Exploring, it is time to drift away!
Our oceans make up 70 per cent of the Earth's surface and are in constant motion. Driven by the sun and the wind our oceans develop mighty currents and eddies, some of which can take centuries to loop through all of our planet's ocean basins.
These currents also move through three dimensions. Many rise from the deep ocean near coastlines while other currents descend to the deepest parts of the ocean. These vertically descending currents are often, but not always, in the middle of the ocean in regions known as the five great gyres. These gyres are giant vortices spanning the whole ocean basin where water at the surface slowly spirals inwards until it sinks.
However, almost all plastic materials and lighter than water objects (such as those messages in a bottles) stay on the surface.
Since the late 1970s, ocean scientists have tracked drifting buoys but it wasn't until 1982 the World Climate Research Programme put forward the idea of a standardised global array of drifting buoys. These buoys float with the currents just like plastics except - like Twitter from the sea - they send a short message to scientists every six hours about where they are and the conditions in that location.
With this information, we have been able to create a statistical model of the surface pathways of our oceans. The Adrift website uses this model and generates an animation of the likely path and destination of floating debris over a ten year period into the future.
For the full details go to Erik Van Sebille's webpage or the paper Origin, dynamics and evolution of ocean garbage patches from observed surface drifters. If you have any further questions you can contact Erik van Sebille
Published on Jan 8, 2013
Just how much plastic is there floating around in our oceans? Dr Erik van Sebille from UNSW's Climate Change Research Centre has completed a study of ocean "garbage patches", and has found that in some regions the amount of plastic outweighs that of marine life.
MORE INFO:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7...
UNSW Climate Change Research Centre:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7...
link to interactive map here >>>
http://adrift.org.au/map?lat=34.6&lng=-141¢er=-122.5
Duckies and Other Plastic
We show you a cute rubber duckie on the map, but the experiment you are doing when you click on the map is actually very sad. You are investigating how plastics move in the ocean.
The plastic litter is one of the biggest problems in our ocean. It can entangle marine animals, or they can mistake it for food and eat it. If that happens, the plastic gets into the food-chain, and in particular the chemicals in the plastics can be very harmful.
Fortunately, there are many groups of people that want to do something about this problem. They for instance clean up beaches, or try to reduce the amount of plastics we use in our daily live.
So, if you want to help out yourself, why not contact one of the organisations below?
5 Gyres
Tangaroa Blue
Surfrider Foundation
Plastic Oceans
Adrift.org.au is intended as an educational site. It should not be used for any policy decisions and comes without any warranty. Any inquiries should be directed to Dr Erik van Sebille at the University of New South Wales. Support for this site is provided by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science and the NeCTAR Research Cloud.