On January 28th, I attended a lecture in the Rita Center focused on marine life. This event was sponsored by the Biology department and the Environmental Studies graduate program. The impactful talk was given by Dr. Qamar Schuyler, who is an research scientist at CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere. She also graduated from the environmental studies program at C of C in 2004! Despite an extremely successful, and what she described as a “rabbit hole”, career path Dr. Schuyler made the talk easy to grasp for everyone.

The “plasticine era” is a section of the Anthropocene, focusing on the overuse and misuse of plastic in today’s society. Dr. Schuyler’s expertise was on marine debris and how it is affecting ecosystems and species. One major piece of the talk that was surprising to me was the size of debris in the ocean. I honestly imagined a massive and clumped together mound of trash; however, the exact opposite is true. Dr. Schuyler showed a picture of the densest amount of trash in the ocean, and it looked like a few specks floating around. This magnitude of this problem makes more sense now, considering the difficulty in rounding up all of this microscopic debris. Over 700 species have been proven to be affected by marine debris, from animals at the bottom of the food chain to predators. Typical interference is caused by either entanglement or digestion. Dr. Schuyler measured the lethality of plastic by recording and comparing sea turtles fatality reports. She shockingly found that if one piece of plastic is consumed, there is a 22% jump in the chance of mortality. As if this isn’t already terrifying enough, the chemicals used in the production of plastics can also soak into the tissues of marine animals and has the ability to alter their genes. If you are looking at this with an anthropocentric mindset, this also relates to any sushi lovers. Scientist still do not know if these chemicals can be transferred to our systems through fish digestion, but it is certainly possible.

Typically with talks addressing the subject of environmental problems, a sense of helplessness settles in. Dr. Schuyler combated this by offering possible ways to get involved in this complex problem. She described the “Plastic Pipeline” which is essentially the economic and social processes that are required for plastic to get to the ocean. Instead of leaving it at this, she explained all of the places where intervention is possible. This reminded me of the “Story of Stuff” video that we watched in class. Although this video addressed a different waste problem, it tied into the theme of overconsumption and disconnection in our industry. Breaking down these wicked and overwhelming problems into the sequence of events that creates them allows them to be understood. Dr. Schuyler ended the talk on a positive note, simply saying that it is possible to fix this problem. What is necessary is for everyday people to have empathy and become advocates for problems that might not directly affect them. The bottom up method works! I left the talk feeling impressed with the drive and knowledge Dr. Schuyler has put into this topic. It is comforting that there are people like her in the world.