TRACKING CALIFORNIA'S TRASH (TCT)
Looking Upstream and Furthering Policy.
We are using five different trawl designs. We’ll be using the Manta Trawl, High Speed Trawl and the Mini Hi Speed Trawl, three trawls that we’ve used during our ocean expeditions, and a stream bed sampler that historically been used to monitor sediment, along with the rectangular trawl, a trawl deigned specifically for our project by 5 Gyres’ Dr. Marcus Eriksen.
Project Schedule:
March 2015 Bay Area Dry Weather Field Work
April/May 2015 Bay Area Dry Weather Field Work
August 2015 Los Angeles Area Dry Weather Field Work
October/November 2015 Los Angeles and Bay Area Wet Weather Field Work
January/February 2015 Bay Area Wet Weather Field Work
If you want to know even more about the project, please contact the 5 Gyres Project Manager Carolynn Box ([email protected])
5 Gyres has partnered with the State Water Resources Control Board, the Bay Area Storm Management Agencies Association (BASMAA), and the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board to carry out the Tracking California’s Trash Project (TCT), a project that includes multiple large scale projects to track and understand trash, which is mostly single use plastic items, in California’s coastal areas. TCT aims to help cities and counties better understand if the efforts that have been put in place to reduce trash (bag and foam bans, increased street sweeping, catchment basins, etc) from entering the marine environment are working.
The TCT Project aims to:
- Develop repeatable methods to track trash at different flow times in channelized and natural creeks/rivers
- Sample four California creeks/rivers during dry and rainy periods
- Sample first flush in a small storm
5 Gyres is responsible for developing methods to understand trash levels in several creeks in the San Francisco Bay (and a river in Los Angeles area). This will be done by applying and modifying our ocean research techniques in creeks and rivers.