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Trash Travels: Connecting Humans’ Impact on Our Ocean World

Trash Travels: Connecting Humans' Impact on Our Ocean World


Elizabeth Joyner, NASA Langley, presented to 47 international educators through a collaboration with NASA's STEM Educator Professional Development Collaborative and EarthEcho International, a leading environmental and ocean education nonprofit organization founded and led by Philippe Cousteau, in a virtual session called "Trash Travels: Connecting Humans' Impact on Our Ocean World" on November 22, 2021. Joyner presented the My NASA Data Ocean Circulation and Garbage Patches storymap and provided a framework for developing students' understanding of the garbage gyres (or garbage patches) using NASA data and visualizations. EarthEcho's Stacy Rafalowski joined Joyner to further explore the impact of plastics on the ocean's biosphere by providing a live shorebird bolus dissection. This dissection revealed a range of plastic fragments logged in an albatross's digestive system and demonstrated the real-world impacts of plastics pollution. The two speakers offered additional curricular resources for engaging students in K12 classroom environments. (Award No. NNX16AC54A)

NASA Garbage Patch Visualization Experiment (top left) sets the stage for understanding plastic distribution via our surface currents and the phenomenon of plastics found in the dissected bird bolus.

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Nov 22, 2021
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NASA Science Editorial Team

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