Our mission this quarter is to analyze plastic pollutants in the ocean. According to George Leonard, the chief scientist at the Ocean Conservancy, “At least half of [...ocean plastic waste] is not consumer plastics, which are central to much of the current debate, but fishing gear.” This fact surprised our team and inspired us to look deeper into the connection between the fishing industry and plastic in the ocean.
In recent years, individuals have been switching out their water bottles and plastic bags for resuable alternatives. More and more people are aware of their personal impact on the environment and actively work to minimize their carbon footprint.
However, what many people do not know is that the fishing industry is the biggest contributor of large plastics in the ocean, with fishing gear making up about "70 percent of plastics more than 20 centimeters (approximately 8 inches) large floating on the ocean's surface" (Greenpeace).
Our team aims to investigate international fishing patterns and fishing activity translates to plastic pollution in our oceans.
We will present our data and findings through interactive web maps. We chose this medium because web maps can easily display information with a location component to it.
We will use the following technologies in our project.
| Technology | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Python/R | Python and R will be the programming languages used to conduct statistical analyses of our data. |
| Tableau | Tableau is a data visualization software that will help us create our web maps. |
| HTML/CSS | HTML and CSS will be the backbone of our website. |
| Javascript | Javascript will animate our web maps allowing people to interact with them. |
| Git | Git will be used to work collaboratively on our project this quarter. |
- Plastic Data Set: Estimate of Plastic Pollution in the World's Ocean link
- Years: 2007-2013
- Fishing Data Set: Global Datasets of AIS-based Fishing Effort and Vessel Presence link
- Years: 2012-2020
- Note: The fishing data set comes from Global Fishing Watch, and you have to make an account to access the data.
- Description: This dataset contains the Global Fishing Watch AIS-based fishing effort and vessel presence datasets. Data is based on fishing detections of >114,000 unique AIS devices on fishing vessels, of which ~70,000 are active each year. Fishing vessels are identified via a neural network classifier, vessel registry databases, and manual review by GFW and regional experts. Data are binned into grid cells 0.01 (or 0.1) degrees on a side and measured in units of hours. The time is calculated by assigning an amount of time to each AIS detection (which is the time to the previous position), and then summing all positions in each grid cell.