Some Good May Come from the Malaysian Plane Disappearance

Humans have a delightful penchant for committing resources to unraveling a mystery even if the associated costs are exorbitant, and even when the money would be better allocated to an established problem, not so dramatic and mysterious, whose solution is obvious.  For example, cities could use allocated funds to set up tiny boxes in designated areas for the homeless to take shelter in in unfavorable weather.  Or if a country is invested in transporting oil by rail, why not use available monies to upgrade rail infrastructure to avoid the kind of disaster Lac-Magantic, Quebec suffered last year?

Perhaps these suggestions seem trivial when an unexpected tragedy takes place, such as the mysterious disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 and the certain death of 239 people.  But, humans need to know:  What happened?  Where is the plane?  Where are the bodies?  Who is responsible?  Where is the plane????

Right now, as I write, an international force of multiple aircraft and ships with sophisticated equipment are searching the turbulent waters in the southern Indian Ocean off the coast of Perth, Australia.  So far, several million dollars have been spent and more is committed.  In 2009 when Air France Flight 447 went down in the Atlantic off Brazil's northeast coast, the search and recovery effort cost $40 million; but there is no knowing now how much the Malaysia 370 search will cost--most agree there will be no recovery.

As reports from satellite images started to come in last week that debris was spotted, planes and ships were sent to locate, identify and investigate . . . all to no avail.  The search area has narrowed to a zone now recognized as one of the five acknowledged ocean gyres or garbage patches.  North America's garbage patch is the North Pacific Gyre, off the coast of California and about the size of Alaska, containing 3+ million tons of trash, much of it plastic.

The thing about plastic is, it doesn't biodegrade.  It does, however, breakdown (as a result of sunburn and being endlessly tossed on waves).  It breaks down into tinier and tinier pieces.  At any stage in the process, it is consumed by ocean wildlife, who see it as food.  The trash in our oceans has two primary impacts: entanglement and ingestion.

A fast google search will readily show you a monk seal strangled by a high tech fishing net or a turtle with a deformed shell, caused by a plastic ring that got lodged when it was young.  The stories of seabirds, such as albatross, found dead with lighters and plastic bags filling their stomachs are almost commonplace.  Small fish, big fish, sea mammals, seabirds--all marine species consume plastic.  Millions and millions die every year as we continue to use our oceans as a trash system.

The beauty in my eyes of the search for Malaysia 370 is that the world is being made aware of ocean garbage.  According to Captain Charles Moore, the founder of Algalita Marine Research Institute (in an NPR "Here & Now" interview by Robin Young, 1 Apr. 2014), the Indian Ocean Gyre has 100,000 discrete pieces of debris/sq. km., and that means billions and billions of tiny plastic chips that aren't going anywhere, except down a lot of hungry throats.

Captain Moore and others think we are beyond needing to simply take our own bags with us to the grocery store or recycling the hundreds of millions of plastic yogurt cups we buy and toss each year.  We need to "completely change the throwaway society's ethos" (Moore, NPR).  And Yale Environment 360's Carl Safina suggests we should develop a new generation of packaging materials, designed not to last millenia, but to decompose within weeks after an expiration date (The Guardian, 1 July 2013).

These are two small voices, seeing a tragedy much greater and with much more long range harm than one little plane nobody can find.  Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, speaking yesterday on Perth Radio 6iX, said, "Look, it's one of the great mysteries of our time."   He was referring, of course, to Malaysia 370; but I think his statement applies even more appropriately to the question, when will we stop treating Earth like a trash pail or an ashtray?

If the search for the missing plane has given us the opportunity to have our own garbage rubbed in our faces, then I say, this is good news.  We have a chance to change.  Let's do it.