Sources of Marine Plastic Pollution
Community Contributed
Clare Gallagher, PhD Student, Environmental Studies
On a hot summer day in 2022, Jasmine Buerano found herself on a remote coastline of Molokai, hacking away at a 1,000-pound bluish-gray fishing net that smelled like seawater.
Buerano, the storytelling coordinator for the non-profit Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii (SCH), along with 15 other volunteers, couldn’t gawk for long. They were racing the tide.
They tackled the huge net in sections to put into “super sacks,” which would be scooped up by a helicopter the next day. But in addition to consolidating the net and other plastic trash, they had to move the sacks across rocky tidal pools, up a steep embankment, and above the high tide line so that the sacks wouldn’t be taken back out to sea later.…