Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... [ ?

?? ]

- My rappel!

- Oh, my gosh, it's beautiful!

- Good morning, everybody!

- Woo!

Let's do it again!

- Nicely done!

- Oh, yeah!

Fourteen and a half.

Yes!

That was awesome!

[ people cheering ] There you go, up, up... ED JAHN: Tonight, on Oregon Field Guide: [ waves lapping ] A walk on the beach isn't what it used to be.

- Microplastics, Styrofoam.

It's no secret that you can now find plastic on even the most wild stretches of Oregon coast.

- Holy cow.

It's mindboggling how much debris is out there.

But think about it: as recently as the 1960s, plastic had just barely entered consumer life.

- We see plastic everywhere.

This is a relatively new problem, and it's a big one.

We've got this latent reservoir of products that is basically a future supply of broken-down microplastics.

Today, there's plastic in the ocean, in our rivers, and even in the food we eat.

How did a region that prides itself on environmental stewardship come to this?

This is on the Deschutes River.

Tonight, Oregon Field Guide takes a deep dive with three different looks at the plastic problem.

- Here we go!

We'll begin with Jule Gilfillan's journey to the coast.

[ gull cawing ] It's a real pleasure being out here.

[ birds calling ] I mean, look at it.

You've got the beach and the dunes and the sky and bald eagles flying around.

I've seen as many as 36 eagles in one trip.

JULE GILFILLAN: Russ Lewis visits this stretch of the Long Beach Peninsula almost every day.

But Russ is no ordinary beachcomber.

I kind of look at myself as a custodian of the beach.

What I usually do is I just drive along, picking up all the litter that I can find along the way, like right here.

There's a plastic bottle.

[ birds calling ] Sometimes you might find 50 or 60 in one day.

This is a chunk of Styrofoam, and it's put together with these little pellets.

The birds will peck away on it, and you'll find dead birds on the beach occasionally.

And they actually starve to death because their craw is full of plastics.

These big objects that you're seeing, it all breaks down into small stuff.

It's in the sand.

It's along the beach zone, and it's breaking down one molecule at a time.

The ocean is full of plastic.

You just can't get around that.

Since 2012, Russ has been collecting about six tons of garbage off this stretch of beach every year.

But one man's trash is another man's data.

- Smells like old times.

- Yes, it does.

Dr. John Chapman of the Hatfield Marine Science Center is one of the researchers taking a deep dive, if you will, into the science of marine debris.

Oh, yeah, look -- here, this has an oyster on it.

You wouldn't see -- Oh, yeah.

-- this on something from this coast.

We discovered what Russ was doing here quite late, actually.

And he'd been accumulating this debris in this very, very particular way.

He gets everything that's there.

He bags it up.

He writes down how many bags he got, where he got them.

And so we have this constant record of how much debris is there.

John's specialty is invasive species, so he's very interested in the life forms that are hitching a ride on that debris.

Oh, look at that.

This barnacle is still intact.

But it wasn't until June 2012 that John even realized that trash from overseas might be a source of biological invasion.

The dock was from the Misawa Fishing Port, and it was deeply coated by Asian species.

We were shocked to discover that species could drift across the ocean on floating debris.

We thought that that was impossible.

And not only were they surviving on there, but they were going through generations on these objects.

[ waves crashing ] The dock was a remnant of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan in March 2011.

The tragedy claimed some 15,000 lives, wiped out more than $200 billion worth of infrastructure, and in one fell swoop, changed the study of marine invasion ecology forever.

It's this enormous door that opened for us to see something that we had never imagined was possible, and that it was huge.

To date, researchers have found roughly 350 marine species, most of which have never been documented on our shores before, all carried across the ocean on manmade debris, like plastic.

These are plastic rafts, right?

These are artificial rafts.

A tree or a branch would disintegrate or fall apart before a significant amount of it could cross the ocean.

But now, the plastic and the fiberglass and the concrete and the steel objects that we make, they don't disappear.

They carry these things across.

NEWSCASTER: Amazingly, five fish were found living inside the boat.

They'd hitched a ride.

One of the big fish is now living in an aquarium... Two barred knifejaws and 21 yellowtail jacks that also rafted over from Japan on tsunami debris now make their home at the Oregon Coast Aquarium.

- So this is the open sea.

- The significance of finding these animals is two-fold.

One, it is very fascinating.

Temperatures and salinities are very similar in this situation.

And the animals are doing quite well, thriving and growing and feeding and swimming in their school.

At the same time, we are always concerned with animals that would not normally be found here.

This part right here -- The Pacific Northwest's environmental similarity to many foreign waters makes it possible for Russ Lewis to find creatures that have survived the long trip across the Pacific Ocean, even seven years after the tsunami.

- Here comes a batch of bags of marine specimens.

JOHN: What this means is that debris is scattered so far that we're still seeing it seven years later.

It was like breaking the deck on the pool table.

The balls went everywhere.

And the dates are on there and they're all labeled.

Oh yeah, that looks like -- And now we're seeing that the balls really did have incredibly different histories.

Back at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, John and his colleague Dr. Jessica Miller are piecing together those histories -- in this case, of mussels.

It's 59.4 millimeters long and it's -- - So one of the most common species that we've found on Japanese tsunami marine debris is the Mediterranean mussel, Mytilus galloprovincialis.

So this mussel has arrived on over half of the 600 items we've looked at.

So this mussel is native to the Mediterranean, but it has invaded Japan and other parts of the world.

And over 90% of the mussels that arrived in Washington and Oregon were capable of reproduction.

They had eggs and sperm.

Chemical analysis of the mussels' shells helps Jessica understand how long each animal was adrift and what environments it passed through on its way across the ocean.

Learning as much as you can about those rafts and who's arriving on them and where are they arriving, at least help us to evaluate the likelihood of some of them becoming established.

While researchers all over the world puzzle out the long-term impacts of this rafting phenomenon, one thing is clear.

I think it's another example of how humans are impacting global processes.

The Japanese government estimates that the 2011 tsunami swept about five million tons of debris into the Pacific Ocean.

That massive influx also gave John Chapman a surprising glimpse into a much larger problem.

JOHN: Our assumption was that the tsunami debris would cause a giant uptick in the accumulation of debris on the coast.

What we found instead was relative to how much other stuff there was, it didn't make any difference in all the rest of it there.

We couldn't detect it.

So the thing that we're grasping with now is, holy cow.

It's mindboggling how much debris is out there.

We don't know what this is going to do, which is the worst thing of all, perhaps.

We don't know.

We just know that every place is connected with every other single place on the planet.

And it's called plastic trash.

[ birds calling ] [ ?

?? ]

- And this is the net.

If the ocean is filled with plastic, where did it all come from?

That's a question that Oregon Field Guide's Jes Burns and Cassandra Profita decided to tackle head-on with a scientific look at our rivers, where there's literally more plastic than meets the eye.

JES BURNS: Our idea is pretty simple.

We'll travel around to some of Oregon's most iconic rivers, the places we play and the source of our food and drinking water.

We'll take water samples, and then we'll bring them back to the lab to see if we can find visible and microscopic plastic.

Simple idea?

Yes.

But execution, well, we're journalists, not scientists.

So we do what we always do: we find ourselves an expert.

- Hey.

- Hey, how's it going?

- All right.

Hey, I'm Jes.

- Nice to meet you.

Elise.

- Cassandra.

- Hi, nice to meet you.

Scientist Elise Granek has agreed to help us with this project, along with undergraduate Ashley Peterson and baby Noah.

- Junior scientist in training.

- Yeah, there you go.

Elise is going to teach us how to sample for microplastics using a fine mesh net in the river.

- Ooh.

- So I think that's called the cod.

- Cod end of the net?

Yes.

Did you know that?

I've been out with a plankton net before.

I just haven't used it.

Hey, bud.

Oh, your hat disappeared.

Elise's lab studies how microplastics affect marine creatures like oysters and crabs.

ELISE: Okay.

So the way this works is it's a plankton tow and the idea is that you have a large volume of water that can pass through this net.

But first, we have to ensure that any plastic we find actually comes from the water and not us.

So we live in a plastic world, right?

It's really hard for us to find shoes that have no plastic whatsoever, right?

I see some mesh on yours.

Mine have straps.

- I had no idea, right?

You just don't even think about it.

We remove as much plastic as possible from the area.

We clean everything, set up a control, and rinse the jars.

So you'll shake it for maybe 30 seconds like that.

[ water sloshing ] And again.

CASSANDRA: My arm's getting tired.

We're not the first people to look for microplastics in rivers.

But very little is known about how much plastic is in Oregon's rivers.

To find out, we need to get the net into the river.

- All right, ready?

- Okay, I'm going to go down.

All right.

- All right, we've got 15 minutes of this.

- Uh, yep.

Still, there's a lot of water in the river.

- Back out.

- Okay.

And we don't know if we'll find what we're looking for.

Think of plastics as needles in a giant liquid haystack.

- Yeah, there you go.

- Okay.

- Ugh.

- Some sludge?

- Oh, that's some sludge.

- All right.

There you go.

- Oh, yeah, there's plastic in there.

I'm feeling it.

With the first sample site in downtown Portland complete, it's time for the next phase of our plan.

We decided to test a total of eight sites along Oregon's most populated rivers.

Cassandra will sample one site on the Columbia River and two more on the Willamette.

I'll be taking samples at two sites each on the Rogue and Deschutes.

We chose these sample sites intentionally, trying to get what we expect will be plastic-free samples high up in the watersheds and then see how they compare to populated sites farther downstream.

Now we've got the gear, we've got the training: it's time to do some science.

[ ?

?? ]

I have raided my closet and looked for anything that was made out of 100% cotton.

So we've got to make sure it stretches out, right?

Wow.

The river wants to take it.

JES: We're on the banks of the Rogue River right in Grant's Pass.

At this point, we've basically traveled through all the population centers that the Rogue River travels through.

Oh, my goodness.

So tight.

JES: All right.

I did this wrong.

CASSANDRA: Woo!

It's pretty heavy.

JES: All right.

15 minutes.

Get comfy.

[ water gurgling ] Science is hard.

Oh, god.

My waders are split.

I'm soaking wet.

Oh, shoot.

The net doesn't seem to want to sink.

Other than that, everything's good.

JES: All right.

There's a lot going wrong at this point, and, ooh, the water just made it to my butt.

[ groans ] Here we go.

I don't know.

I'd be surprised if there's plastic up here.

If there is, then it's incredible.

- Oh, there's Styrofoam.

JES: Ooh!

I think I see some plastic.

It is definitely not of the river.

- That looks -- - Wow.

That's it.

In Oregon, plastics are getting into the rivers in a couple obvious ways.

First is litter, plain and simple.

The plastic trash that ends up in the river eventually breaks down into tinier and tinier particles.

Other kinds of plastics start out tiny, invisible to the naked eye.

Plastic fibers are constantly shedding from our clothes when we wash them.

They end up in wastewater treatment plants that don't have the technology to filter them out.

Will we find some of these escaped microfibers?

Only the lab will tell.

This is Tumalo.

This is on the Deschutes River.

The first step is to get rid of the sticks and leaves.

- All right.

We use a chemical that dissolves everything organic -- - Can you see it starting to go?

-- turning it into a fine, soupy goo.

- Looks a little like the bottom of your coffee pot.

With some clearish samples in hand, we go to researcher Dorothy Horn to show us what we're looking for.

All right, guys, so these are our samples.

First up is the sample taken from the Willamette River near Albany, where Cassandra actually saw trash go into the net.

DOROTHY: And this actually has a chunk of Styrofoam in it so that's probably part of the floating trash that you saw.

CASSANDRA: So when you're looking at these under the microscope, you're going to be looking for things that aren't as big as the Styrofoam chunk.

What are you looking for?

DOROTHY: So we're looking for something that doesn't look like it should be there, so something bright, usually, like, bright colors or really white or really standard shade.

I don't know how you would see anything in the bottom.

DOROTHY: It's like hunting through the forest for a tiny, tiny twig.

So there's a fiber right there.

So in the microscope, it's blue.

- Oh, yeah.

It's really blue.

- It's really obvious.

CASSANDRA: And it's very smooth.

You know, a lot of the other stuff in there, it's, like, wavy or chunky or it looks fibrous in a natural way.

Dorothy then uses the attached computer to measure the plastic piece we found.

So here's a scale mark.

So that's one millimeter in length, right?

And here's our fiber.

CASSANDRA: And is there a definition for microplastic?

DOROTHY: Anything less than five millimeters.

JES: So this is micro.

DOROTHY: This is definitely micro.

This might not seem like much plastic, considering how tiny many of these fibers are, but consider that our rivers are giant conveyer belts, constantly taking our trash out to sea.

Estimates are we'll have more ocean plastic than fish in just 30 years.

Now the question is: will we find plastic near the pristine headwaters of the Rogue River, where virtually nobody lives?

Could we be that saturated with plastic?

Do we need to put a wager on this?

Are we going to find plastic?

Upper Rogue, like, very few people above -- are we?

That's it?

You're kidding me.

No, no, no.

That cannot be that sample.

Look.

I just opened it.

Don't be sad.

Or maybe be sad.

JES: There it is.

DOROTHY: Yep.

There you go, right there.

In the end, we identified these kinds of fibers and other plastic fragments in all of our samples.

But we'll need some additional testing to make sure what looks like plastic actually is.

Where is this stuff coming from?

Like, that just boggles my mind.

DOROTHY: So most of the fibers come from us washing our clothes.

So many studies have been done now, and up to 700,000 fibers per load of laundry goes into the graywater, which goes to the wastewater treatment plant.

JES: There are no wastewater treatment plants above where this is.

I mean, there's probably some septic systems.

DOROTHY: Okay, so there you go.

That's what it is.

It's septic systems.

Some of Oregon's river plastic will travel from these remote spots all the way to the ocean.

And then I'm a fish or a little crab and I come along and I'm like, ooh, it looks like the same thing I eat.

If it is a crab that we eat or a fish that we eat, then it does matter to people.

Because then some of that plastic could show up inside of us.

[ ?

?? ]

[ ?

?? ]

KEN CHRISTENSEN: When you look at a bowl of shellfish, you might think, ''dinner.''

Mmm.

Sarah Dudas thinks, ''work.''

Okay, 26.

I've done too many dissections.

52.

I've done too many spawnings.

78.

I can't help but look at the steamed clams, and they're open, and I'm inside like, ''Oh, wow.

That one's really fertile.

I can see all the eggs in it.''

You know, these are comments I make at dinner parties.

She's a shellfish biologist, and lately, she's pointing out something else in those shellfish.

They're all sorts of different colors.

They're very small.

All sorts of different shapes and sizes.

ANNOUNCER: Out of relatively new materials we've familiarly called -- - Plastics.

- DUDAS: Plastic.

Microplastics.

Last summer, she and her students collected thousands of clams and oysters across coastal British Columbia.

The task of starting to process those samples began.

They used chemicals to break the shellfish down, filtered out all the biodegradable stuff, and looked at what was left behind.

We're finding most shellfish have plastic in them.

So when you eat clams and oysters -- You're eating plastic as well.

Her study was funded by the Canadian government and British Columbia shellfish aquaculture industry.

They wanted to test whether shellfish farmers have been contaminating their own crop.

Shellfish aquaculture uses a lot of plastic infrastructure.

It's one of the tricky things, is really trying to figure out the sources of the plastics.

She turned to Peter Ross.

He's been studying ocean pollution for the past few decades.

I try to let the ocean inform us and guide our research priorities.

We've long known that debris and litter can be a problem for sea life.

A few years ago, Ross began studying the world of plastics that don't show up in photographs, sampling water off the Pacific Northwest coast.

And we were floored.

[ ?

?? ]

We documented widespread microplastics from 200 particles per cubic meter of seawater all the way up to 9,200 particles per cubic meter of seawater.

Large numbers.

We see little fragments.

We see microbeads -- DUDAS: Microbeads.

ROSS: -- from toothpaste and facial scrubs.

We see nurdles.

DUDAS: They're just resin pellets that can be melted and formed into whatever.

ROSS: We see polystyrene beads.

DUDAS: Like, I went to the dollar store at Christmas, and they were selling Styrofoam beads as fake snow.

Why?

ROSS: But 80% of the particles of microplastics that we're running into consists of fibers.

We see loads and loads of fibers.

They're being readily ingested and consumed at the bottom of the food chain.

So we're finding them basically in every species we look at.

We need to know where those fibers are coming from.

So lately, Ross's science lab is looking more like a crime lab.

Okay, so let's -- we found this little particle.

He's using forensic technology to trace these fibers back to their source.

I'm just going to pinch that down there and confirm what they are and where they might be coming from.

It can calculate a particle's chemical makeup and cross-reference it with a global database of materials.

So if we look at, say, the second and third ones, which are commercial products.

- It's a good match.

ROSS: One, two, three beautiful peaks.

- Good match.

Nylon.

Nylon fiber, yep.

So this is kind of nice, because they're all nylon and you've got the data.

They've also identified plastics like olefin and polyester, pointing to the fact that many of the fibers ending up in the ocean are starting their journey much closer to home -- probably in your home.

It would suggest that fibers are coming, in part, from our own clothing.

One of Canada's biggest outdoor clothing retailers is taking notice.

- Just about all the fabrics we use are either wovens or knits, meaning that the fibers are kind of mashed up together in a weaving process or in a knitting process.

Over time, more and more of them work loose as part of the washing cycle.

That means a single load of laundry can create thousands of microplastics, and filters on washing machines and wastewater treatment plants aren't built to catch fibers that small.

Those are getting flushed out into the water system.

Crook says better filters could be one solution, but better clothing is another.

Working with suppliers to find new materials and then testing them against the old ones to understand how they fail, where they fail.

We don't know exactly which materials are degrading at which rates and what's out there in the water systems right now.

That's part of what we're looking to the science for.

The more we know about how this problem's manifesting in the water, the more we can go back and tinker and try to improve the materials.

He hopes the data will start a conversation within the global apparel industry and beyond.

Yeah, it's a society issue.

ANNOUNCER: It was indeed lucky for us that the men of plastics had labored so long and well.

Ready to bring new beauty and comfort to your home and add charm to your peacetime living.

ROSS: When we look around our home and our work environment and our cities, we see plastic everywhere.

My concern is that we've got this latent reservoir of products that is basically a future supply of broken down microplastics.

And those microplastics are, in turn, ingested up into the food chain.

So should you be concerned about being part of that food chain?

Scientists don't know yet.

DUDAS: Literally, every day we're learning more about the risk that those microplastics might pose to the animals that are eating them, us included as well.

But they do know how to avoid seeing the worst effects.

Reduce plastic.

Reduce our use of plastic.

[ ?

?? ]

You can now find many Oregon Field Guide stories and episodes online.

And to be part of the conversation about the outdoors and environment here in the Northwest, join us on Facebook.

[ water rushing ] Major support for Oregon Field Guide is provided by... Additional support provided by... And the following... And the contributing members of OPB and viewers like you.