the congregation of pollutants in the pacific ocean...the congregation of pollutants in the pacific...
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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
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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.
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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
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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;
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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));