The Congregation of Pollutants in the Pacific Ocean

New Mexico

Supercomputing Challenge

Final Report

April 6th, 2016

Team Number 14

Desert Academy

Team Members

Daniel Onstott

Luke Shankin

Marisa Tedori

Lileigh Thomas

Teacher(s)

Jocelyn Comstock

Brian Smith

Project Mentor

Dr. Chris Holden

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Table of contents

Executive Summary.............................................................................................................2

Introduction.......................…………………………………………………………......….3

Description and Methods……………………………………………...……….…....….…3

Model and Product…………………………………………………….………….….……4

Result……………………………………………………….………………….……….…6

Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………..…7

Recommendations…………………………………………………………………………7

Acknowledgements………………………………………………..………………………8

Works Cited…………………………….…………………………………..…..…………9

Appendices……………………………………………………………….………………10

2

Executive Summary

It is common knowledge that the human race faces the growing dangers and effects of

climate change. This varies from global warming to deforestation. However, this project

addresses one of the many growing climate issues: the 6 ocean plastic gyres, specifically the

Northern Pacific Gyre. A gyre is a natural congregation of ocean currents, however the plastic

accumulating in them is not. Natural disasters, trash dumping, and human carelessness bring in

most of the trash. As of 2014, there is an estimated 8 million metric tons of trash floating around

the ocean. As expected, this has an enormous negative impact of marine life, water quality, and

general well being of our oceans.

We chose to model this formation of the Northern Pacific Gyre, which is north of Hawaii,

and roughly twice the size of Texas. To do this, we worked in Gamemaker. Our program uses

several objects to represent metric tons of trash that escape into the ocean. Each of these objects

uses the distance from the current as an inverse multiplier for its speed. In this way, trash is

pushed around with a varying and randomized speed based on its distance from the main current.

The actual trash gyres form this way as large collections of plastic, glass and paper.

Although our simulation was limited in its testing ability, it demonstrated how clumped

and intrusive the pollution can become, it was lacking in how well it demonstrated its effects

upon the sea life however due to the nature of the program it is easily possible to visually gather

information on how influential the gyres would be on sea life.

3

Introduction

Over the past 35 years, pollution has been dumped into the Pacific Ocean through

different ways. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, great barrier reef dumping, and general

human pollution eventually bring trash to the ocean as well. A study in 2014 estimated about 8

million metric tons of trash floats around, polluting beaches and marine life. Ocean currents

bring the trash around the water until it has formed a vast plane of trash.

As the gyre increases in size, usually due to a large amount of barrier reef dumping from

organizations who prefer not to go with an alternative and instead add their waste to ocean gyres,

this is one of the most common ways in which waste is introduced to the gyres. Also since these

gyres’ motions are dictated by ocean currents, they have a continuous amount of marine life

attempting to co­exist with them. As the gyres increase, it intrudes more upon the marine life

habitats, and causes further damage. Composition of these gyres of trash comes into play because

marine life is more negatively impacted by certain materials opposed to others.

Description and Methods

The goal of this project is to demonstrate and model the trash formation, as well as

model how the trash might decompose if left unchecked or if cleaned up through various means.

The collection of pollution can disrupt populations of loggerhead sea turtles, and potentially

house bacteria or carry invasive species. The sea turtles follow migration patterns in a way that

can be shown in a similar way to the currents. Each type of trash affects the sea turtles in a

different way. When a sea turtle object nears the trash there is a chance that it will damage the

turtle in a variety of ways based on how toxic it may be or how likely the turtle is to mistake it

4

for food. However this may be flawed, as the damage inflicted by the materials are coded in with

specific values, so any data gathered by this will be skewed based on how it was programmed

into the code.

The program is built in Gamemaker and uses several objects to represent metric tons of

trash that escape into the ocean. Each of these objects uses the distance from the current as an

inverse multiplier for its speed. In this way, trash is pushed around with a varying and

randomized speed based on its distance from the main current. The actual trash gyres form this

way as large collections of plastic, glass and paper accumulate.

Model and project

The simulation we created is built in Gamemaker, which is a coding engine focused

around splitting the simulation into several different parts. Gamemaker uses “objects” as agents

that can be each given separate lines of code. The objects we defined are both the turtles and the

the various objects of trash. In each trash object there are several steps that the program runs

through.

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When the trash is introduced it will move toward the nearest pull of the current. It does

this in an inverse speed relative to the distance it is from the current. The third object we use is

the invisible object that represents a place for the current to pull other objects. The current is an

object following a path at a varying speed. The current is in place to give the trash an object to

move toward. The turtle object is given two blocks of code to run through. When the turtle is

moving regularly it will follow its migration

pattern loosely (left). The path set for the

turtles is a rough outline of the path that the

turtles normally follow when migrating from

the coast of Japan to the coast of California.

When a turtle is near pollution it may mistake

this for food and seek it out to consume. This

marks the turtle as unhealthy and it will

resume its migration (below).

These objects are used in “rooms”

which is just how Gamemaker is able

to define the space in which the

objects are constrained. Currently the

only purpose of the room we defined

is to display a map of the Pacific

Ocean.

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Results

Roughly 8 million metric tons of trash are added from landmasses each year. This trash is

accumulated from various sources which also determines what kind of pollutant is being added.

18 percent of marine pollution comes from ships which discard or lose in rough waters, nets,

fishing gear, food waste, ship wreckage and buoys. Trash brought to the ocean from streets

during storms or winds is often more chemical based such as plastic bottles or oil and other

fluids from vehicles. The simulation we created shows how this trash can accumulate through

these sources and others and pool in clumps or spread throughout the current. The migration

pattern of the loggerhead turtle passes near and occasionally through where the trash can

accumulate. When the turtles near this trash they will occasionally mistake it for food or eat food

that has been contaminated with chemicals. It is for that reason that composition comes into play

because the turtles, as well as marine life, are more negatively impacted by certain materials

opposed to others, although 90% of the trash in the ocean gyres is plastic based substances, each

of which takes at minimum 50 years to degrade naturally and ranging up to 500 years. After

eating enough trash or being trapped in fishing gear, the turtles will die off or be unable to mate.

Although our simulation was limited in its testing ability, it demonstrated how clumped and

intrusive the pollution can become, it was lacking in how well it demonstrated its effects upon

the sea life, however due to the nature of the program it is easily possible to visually gather

information on how influential the gyres would be on sea life.

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Conclusion

Since the gyres’ motions are dictated by ocean currents, they have a continuous amount

of marine life attempting to co­exist with them. As the gyres increase, it intrudes more upon the

marine life habitats; and as such has many more interactions with the surrounding marine life.

Due to the gyre’s composition, it has had a negative impact, specifically on the population of

loggerhead turtles. As of 2008 the loggerhead turtle has been declared an endangered species due

to the large decreases in its population. This decrease has been linked to the formation of the

Pacific Ocean gyre and the toxicity of the pollutants. It is for that reason that damage inflicted on

marine life by plastic gyres is directly dependent on the gyre’s size.

Recommendations

In order to flesh out the project, several factors could be introduced. Currently there are

bugs with the migration of the turtle and this could be ironed out. The movement and collection

of trash could also be improved with more factors to account for density of the type of trash or

force of the wind exerted on the kinds of trash. There are also several events that might add trash

in large clumps, such as storms or earthquakes, which could be added as well. The extension to

our project, simulating several trash cleanup projects, could also be implemented.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the following people for helping and guiding us through our

Supercomputing Challenge 2016 Project and all the obstacles that included.

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Ms. Jocelyn Comstock, our Desert Academy advisor. We would like to thank her for

keeping us on schedule, advising us on our report writing, and accompanying us too the Kickoff,

Interim Presentation, and Expo.

Mr. Brian Smith, our Santa Fe High advisor. We would like to thank him for

representing our Santa Fe High team. Also for arranging peer and expert review.

Dr. Chris Holden, Professor at UNM and Inspire Mentor. We would like to thank

him for mentoring us in programing literacy, especially Game Maker.

Mr. Charles Burch and Mr. Ginish Sawouan, Interim Report judges. We would like

to thank them for their input and constructive criticism.

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Works Cited

Clarke, Chris. "6 Reasons That Floating Ocean Plastic Cleanup Gizmo Is a Horrible Idea." KCET. N.p., 04 June 2014. Web. 08 Dec. 2015.

"Great Pacific Garbage Patch." National Geographic Education. National Geographic Education,

19 Sept. 2014. Web. 02 Feb. 2016. Kelly, Terra R., et al. "Clinical Pathology Reference Intervals for an In­Water Population of

Juvenile Loggerhead Sea Turtles (Caretta caretta) in Core Sound, North Carolina, USA." PLoS ONE 10.3 (2015). Academic OneFile. Web. 4 Apr. 2016.

Mok, Kimberly. "See How 5 Ocean Garbage Gyres Form over 35 Years in This Visualization

(Video)." TreeHugger. N.p., 24 Aug. 2015. Web. 08 Dec. 2015. "NOAA Marine Debris Program." OR&R's Marine Debris Program. NOAA, n.d. Web. "Ocean Trash Plaguing Our Sea." Smithsonian Ocean Portal. NOAA Marine Debris Program, 31

May 2015. Web. 08 Dec. 2015. "Pollution." WorldWildlife.org. World Wildlife Fund, n.d. Web. 08 Dec. 2015. Singh, Timon. "19­Year­Old Develops Ocean Cleanup Array That Could Remove 7,250,000

Tons Of Plastic From the World’s Oceans." Inhabit. N.p., 26 Mar. 2013. Web. 8 Dec. 2015.

"The Plastic Problem." 5Gyres.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2016. "The Trash Vortex." Greenpeace International. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2016. "What's the Problem." Gyre Clean Up Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Feb. 2016. "The North Pacific Gyre: 100 Million Tons of Garbage and Growing ­ Scribol.com." Scribolcom.

N.p., 18 Aug. 2009. Web. 04 Apr. 2016.

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Appendices

Code

Obj_paper

if distance_to_object(instance_nearest(x,y,obj_initrash))<500

then

move_towards_point((instance_nearest(x,y,obj_initrash)).x,(instance_nearest(x,y,obj_initrash)).y

,random(5))

else

if random(500)<39

then move_towards_point(random(room_width),random(room_height),random(3))

Obj_Plastic

state = e_state.chase;

vsp = 0;

hsp = 0;

switch (state)

case e_state.chase:

dist = point_direction(x,y,obj_pacific_current.x,obj_pacific_current.y);

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trashspd = 1/(1+dist)

dirx = sign(obj_pacific_current.x ­ x);

diry = sign(obj_pacific_current.y ­ y);

hsp = dirx * trashspd * 30;

vsp = diry * trashspd * 30;

x += hsp;

y += vsp;

// if (distance_to_object(obj_initrash) > 128 ) state = e_state.idle;

break;

Obj_Turtle

alert = 0;

consume = 0;

if alert = 1

if distance_to_object(obj_plastic) > 75

alert = 0

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mp_potential_step(obj_plastic.x,obj_plastic.y,2,0)

else

if distance_to_object(obj_plastic) < 50

alert = 1

if place_meeting(x,y,obj_plastic)

sprite_index = spr_turtleUnhealthy

with(instance_nearest(x,y,obj_plastic)) instance_destroy()

consume += 1;

if alert=1

With a chance of 1 out of 20

dir = random(360);

speed = 2;

13

if alert = 0

path_add(pa_turtleMigration, 2, 1, true);

else

path_end()

Obj_addTrash

instance_create(random(1024),random(1024),choose(obj_plastic, obj_paper, obj_glass));