Sometimes, the wind and the waves whip the ocean into a lather. And that word—lather—is a pretty accurate description of sea foam. Sea foam is made of dissolved organic matter, a substance that is so important in the world ocean that it gets its own acronym, DOM. DOM consists primarily of the broken-down bodies of phytoplankton, including microalgae and bacteria. Algal blooms, when they start to die off, create lots of DOM. In sea foam, the DOM acts like soap, creating small bubbles that float on the water.

Dissolved organic matter is full of proteins and lipids (plus lots of carbon, which we’ll get to later). The DOM molecules can act as surfactants, similar to soap and other detergents. The molecules have a hydrophilic end that sticks to water and repels oil, and a hydrophobic end that sticks to oil and repels water. The DOM decreases water’s surface tension and promotes the creation of bubbles as the water is stirred by wind and waves.

Big storms can create huge amounts of sea foam. In 2007, the area north of Sydney, Australia was dubbed the Cappuccino Coast, as foam engulfed 30 miles of shoreline. All this foam can obscure things like rocks and sea snakes, so foam frolickers should frolic with caution.

The best part about sea foam, in my opinion, is not these big foam events, but the fact that sea foam calls attention to dissolved organic matter. We rarely see it (it is dissolved, after all), and we rarely think about it, but DOM plays a massively important role on Earth. It is a key part of the marine food web, though it is hard to eat, because the particles are so tiny. Bacteria are some of the few organisms can eat DOM.

Also, the DOM in the ocean is one of Earth’s largest carbon reservoirs. DOM is produced in the upper ocean, where the phytoplankton and zooplankton live—DOM is made of the spilled contents of their bodies and their cells. The DOM that is not consumed at the surface gradually drifts downward in the water column; it can be found in the deepest parts of the ocean, albeit at lower concentrations than at the surface. As we continue to pump carbon dioxide into the air, some of this carbon ends up as DOM, and it travels slowly throughout the ocean. Next time you see sea foam, think of the dissolved particles of organic matter and the important role they play in the ocean.

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The particulate from diesel trucks, which contains a number of carcinogenic compounds, can also cause lung cancer.

Wondering how much soot is in your city's air right now? Find out through the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

As I write this, it's rainy outside, which is a good thing from an air quality perspective. Rain keeps the dust, or particulate matter (that's "PM" in air quality jargon), glued to streets and cars, and out of the air. Here in San Francisco, our PM 2.5 value is seven — seven micrograms of soot for each cubic meter of air. That's pretty clean, so breathe deep.

Using the calendar on the left side of the page, check out the levels from January 8th — a day where the average PM 2.5 level was 52 — and you can see why the Bay Area Air Quality Management District declared January 8 a Spare the Air Day.

So what do these numbers mean?

PM 2.5 refers to the smallest soot particles that air officials measure – each particle is about 1/70th the width of a human hair. These particles are so small, they're invisible to the naked eye. They're small enough to travel deep into the delicate alveoli, or air sacs, in our lungs, where they can cause or exacerbate asthma and other breathing problems. From there, they can make their way into our bloodstream, leading to heart attacks and strokes. The particulate from diesel trucks, which contains a number of carcinogenic compounds, can also cause lung cancer. (Check out this excellent Q&A on the hazards of diesel soot.)

The black numbers describe the current level. Blue and red figures describe the change from that same hour, the day before.

When you look at the chart, check out the PM numbers for West Oakland, right next to the Port of Oakland. These are what air officials point to when asked to justify the new rules for Port truckers, which this story, and this one, describe. A few years ago, the BAAQMD conducted a detailed health assessment of West Oakland residents, finding cancer rates three times the Bay Area average. In this week's radio story, we also cite a 2008 Harvard study on lung cancer rates in truckers. Here's a story about the study, and the study itself.

Poke around the QUEST website a bit and you'll find an abundance of media on this subject. Start with Gabriela Quiros's terrific TV story, "Perilous Diesel." Gabi's also taken a closer look at some of the mysteries surrounding childhood asthma in another TV piece, "Asthma: What Brought on the Epidemic?"

Last but not least, here's a slide show of scenes from this week's radio QUEST story, featuring characters and scenes from several sides of the campaign to reduce diesel soot.

Listen to Truckers Clean Up Their Act radio report online.

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Hundreds of plastic fragments taken from the Eastern Garbage Patch fill a Petri dish that is also crammed with insect-like water striders and blue copepods.

Be sure to check out Lindsey’s photos of the patch on the slideshow below.

Reporter Lindsey Hoshaw recently returned from a trip to the Pacific Garbage Patch.  She was the only journalist on a scientific expedition led by Charles Moore, who discovered the patch 12 years ago. QUEST reporter Amy Standen talked to Lindsey about her trip to the patch and what she found there.

Tell me a little bit about your trip to the Pacific Gyre. How long did it take, and what was life like onboard?

It took about a week to reach the patch after we set sail from Honolulu, Hawaii. There were four other crew members besides myself: first mate Jeffery Ernst, Algalita director of research Gwen  Lattin, University of North Carolina at Wilmington graduate student Bonnie Monteleone, scientist and director of UC Irvine’s Urban Water Resource Center Bill Cooper, and, of course, Captain Charles Moore, who discovered the patch.

The living conditions were tight. We each had our own bunk and there was one common living area where we’d eat meals, work on our laptops, read, and generally unwind at the end of the day. The meals that Captain Moore cooked were definitely the highlight. We ate fresh Mahi Mahi and had fresh fruit and vegetables throughout most of the trip until we started running low at the end.

Can you describe what the plastic patch looks like, as you approach it in the boat?  Is it something you can see from a distance?

The patch is very difficult to describe because it’s not all stuck together. Imagine if you dumped a small wastebasket full of trash in an Olympic-size swimming pool. It wouldn’t all stay in one place and it might not all float. Most of the patch is made up of tiny plastic particles that are the size of grains of rice. It’s not something that you’d “see as you approach.” In a way, there’s no single feature to approach; the boundary of the garbage patch is hard to define because there is plastic throughout the Pacific. When you’re out on the bow sometimes you won’t see anything and other days you’ll see a rapid-fire succession of empty barrels, rope, buoys, plastic water bottles, and lots of unidentifiable plastic fragments. I’ve often been asked why you can’t see the patch from Google Earth and this is precisely why: The pieces are so tiny, water isn’t a fixed feature, and many of the fragments float beneath the surface.

Describe the moment you reached the gyre. What were your first impressions?

Actually reaching the gyre was a little anti-climactic because we collected trash throughout the journey — not just when were in the highest accumulation zone. It’s not like driving from one state to another where you’d see the road signs and vegetation change. My impression overall was surprisingly tempered. It was strange to see toothbrushes and water bottles and a toilet seat floating in the middle of the ocean. But if you think about how much plastic we produce each year, it completely makes sense. If the average American produces over four pounds of trash a day, how can we be surprised that it’s ending up in the ocean?

Is there any single type of plastic that seems most prominent? (E.g. plastic bags, or fishing nets?) How much of the plastic is still recognizable as a specific product?

The four most common items we saw were ropes, buoys, water bottles, and 55-gallon plastic barrels. Things like umbrella handles, toilet seats, toothbrushes, and light bulbs were much less common. There seem to be more identifiable objects if you’re measuring by weight but if you’re counting the number of plastic pieces then there are many more fragments than specific products.

How does it get there?

Scientists believe most of the plastic in the gyre is from the Pacific Rim, off the coasts of North America and Asia. Some is obviously from commercial fishing vessels; the rope, nets and buoys likely drifted away from fishing operations or may have been intentionally dumped. The question about plastic’s journey from a consumer to the patch is an interesting one. I would love to see a model of how this occurs or a report that charts the path of one piece of plastic from producer to consumer to the patch. Thus far I haven’t seen this and we can’t pick up a piece of plastic from the patch and say, “here’s how this got here.” That said, here’s a likely scenario: Someone on-the-go buys a water bottle and tosses it in the trash. The trashcan happens to be full and the water bottle falls onto the sidewalk. That night it rains and the water bottle goes into a storm drain that empties into the bay. From there it is slowly sucked out to sea and ends up in the North Pacific Gyre, which keeps everything swirling together in a giant whirlpool.

Are there any known human health effects from eating large ocean fish with high concentrations of plastic-derived toxins? And what kinds of toxins are we talking about?

Obviously there’s a precedent for this: We’ve been warned about the inherent dangers in eating tuna that contains mercury. If we are eating large ocean fish with high concentrations of plastic-derived toxins, they may be leaking into our tissues but most table fish (the fish we eat) don’t come from the garbage patch. More research needs to be done on this subject. The types of toxins we’re talking about are DDT and PCBs, among other things.

Having seen the patch in person, does it seem feasible that the Pacific gyre (or any of the others) could ever be cleaned up? Any idea what the leading strategies might be?

I am an eternal optimist, so while it would be extremely difficult to clean up, I still believe some sort of removal program may be possible. What may happen in 100 to 200 years is that we start to see this plastic as valuable once petroleum is no longer available. If rescuing the plastic becomes profitable then I could see people investing in large commercial vessels to try and clean it up. But right now I haven’t seem any clean-up endeavors that have convinced me they can remove an ocean’s worth of trash.

… Or, does the focus seem to be more on understanding the patches so that we don’t keep adding to them?

Of the four groups I know of who are studying the patch — the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Scripps Institute of Oceanography, Project Kaisei and the GP2 Project — the first two are devoted to research and the latter are l ways to clean up the mess. There’s so much that needs to be understood in this arena, I think research is the way to go at this point.

For everyday citizens, our best bet is to do away with single-use disposable items like water bottles and take-out containers and plastic bags and coffee cups. I’ve started carrying around a mason jar, à la No Impact Man (http://noimpactman.typepad.com/), for coffee and restaurant leftovers. It’s just a matter of convincing ourselves that one hour of enjoyment with a disposable coffee cup is not worth a lifetime of plastic pollution.

Tune in April 20, 2010 for a new QUEST TV story, Sea of Plastic. You can also listen now QUEST Radio's story on the Pacific Garbage Patch online.

Funds for Lindsey's trip to the garbage patch were paid in part by Spot.us.

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Volunteers have a whale of a time working to save our seas. Join the fun this weekend!

Friday may be National Doughnut Day, but the real party this weekend is on June 8th in celebration of World Ocean Day. WOD, the brainchild of our Canadian brethren, is a worldwide effort to raise awareness and promote personal connection with the oceans that sustain life on this planet. Because we are lucky to have the ocean as our neighbor here in the Bay Area, there are a number of incredible events surrounding the celebration:

Ocean Beach Cleanup
When: Sunday, June 7th, 10 AM -12 noon
Where: Ocean Beach at the Judah Street Entrance, San Francisco
OceanHealth.Org teams up with the San Francisco Chapter of Surfrider for our annual World Ocean Day beach cleanup in San Francisco at Ocean Beach. There will be gloves and bags. Just bring yourself and dress for variable weather. The event is co-sponsored by the California Academy of Sciences & the Aquarium of the Bay.

I have quite the personal connection to SF’s Ocean Beach. For the past 2.5 years, I have led the Ocean Beach Foundation, working to preserve the beach with the fire pit installations as well as organizing weekly cleanups. It’s quite amazing what you can find out on the beach during cleanups…I’ve found everything from a huge Barbie dollhouse to an old school Radio Flyer (the toy of my youth!). I hope you’ll take part in the Ocean Beach cleanup.

World Oceans Day Film Festival
When: Wednesday, June 10th, 7-10 PM
Where: Victoria Theater, San Francisco
OceanHealth.org is celebrating World Ocean’s Day by screening a few short ocean films. We hope that you'll join us in this great location to share our love of the oceans and to view a variety of films showing perspectives on the ocean.

Purchase advance tickets at http://www.victoriatheatre.org or purchase tickets at the box office on the day of the film. Cost $10.

Some of the great films you'll see:
A Sea Change, End of the Line, Silent Snow, Keeping Coast, Favela Surf Dreams, Papa Tortuga, Revolution of the Crabs

Sustainable Seafood at Cal Academy’s Nightlife
When: Thursday, June 11th, 6-10 PM
Where: California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco
The Academy and its partners in the San Francisco Seafood Watch Alliance are pulling out all the stops to encourage visitors to make sustainable seafood choices.

Local celebrity chefs will whip up tasty treats during sustainable seafood cooking demonstrations: Eric Magnani from Global Gourmet Catering, Kin Lui and Casson Trenor from Tataki Sushi & Sake Bar, Craig Stoll from Delfina, and Loretta Keller from COCO5OO and The Moss Room. Also, we’ll host a screening of “The End of the Line,” a new film about overfishing that received rave reviews at Sundance.

Nightlife often sells out, it is suggested to buy your tickets ahead of time.

For even more events, check out OceanHealth.org

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The new FOCE experimental chamber being developed by MBARI scientists.

The scientists at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) are already well-known for uncovering some of the most extreme marine animals in the deep sea, like the incredible vampire squid. But recently, they're using their unique blend of biology and engineering to study one of the least-discussed impacts of climate change: ocean acidification.

When we hear about climate change, we tend of think of the atmosphere – and for good reason. But as MBARI scientists describe, the oceans are a key part of the process. The ocean acts like a giant sponge, absorbing carbon dioxide emissions from the air. And as we add more and more CO2 to air by burning fossil fuels, the ocean is absorbing it. On one level, it's done us a big favor. Scientists say that we would be experiencing much more extreme climate change were it not for the ocean's ability to remove the heat-trapping gas.

However, the carbon dioxide that the ocean absorbs is making the water more acidic. This isn't the first time that the oceans have become more acidic. But as is the case with many impacts of climate change, it's the rate at which acidification is happening that worries scientists the most.

As you can probably guess, the ocean is an incredibly complex system. So ocean acidification poses an interesting question to scientists: what will the impacts be on marine species and ecosystems? What they know already is that there will be winners and losers in more acidic waters. Some creatures may do fine, while others won't be able to adapt in time. Either way, food webs may feel the effects – including webs involving species that humans depend on , like salmon.

Another major concern has to do with marine animals with certain kinds of shells – known as "calcifiers." Corals, clams and others all use carbonate in the water to build their shells out of calcium carbonate. But ocean acidification reduces the amount of carbonate in the water, making it more difficult for them to make shells. That could be devastating for coral reefs, who are already facing a number of stresses.

Even if you're an animal without a shell, ocean acidification could make things difficult. Scientists are studying how much stress this could put on animals that can't regulate their internal pH, or how it could affect the larvae or reproduction of certain species. MBARI scientists are hoping that the flume they are developing to conduct FOCE experiments will help researchers answer some of these questions.

Check out the whole story – watch the "Acidic Seas" audio slide show online.

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