The Maritime Museum of BC\u2019s new exhibit, The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, aims to convey the realities behind the patch of garbage in the ocean (photo courtesy of Maritime Museum of BC).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nThe exhibit starts by explaining what the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is: a mass of debris in a distinctive area, says Vis, who describes it as more of a smog than a patch. The exhibit explores the impacts on wildlife and humans. (It\u2019s also timely, with World Oceans Week having recently taken place from June 1 to June 8.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPlastics are out in the oceans. They\u2019re getting broken down into smaller pieces\u2014so they end up being microplastics,\u201d says Vis. \u201cAnimals end up eating these plastics. And, of course, we fish.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This means that we ingest a lot of these chemicals, says Vis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOur health is majorly impacted, and of course it\u2019s just going to get worse and worse to the point where we might not even be able to eat any fish,\u201d says Vis. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But despite all the focus on doom and gloom, Vis says that the exhibit actually ends on a more positive note.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe explore work that different organizations around the world are doing,\u201d she says, adding that in BC and Canada there\u2019s a big focus on initiatives like shoreline-trash clean-ups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over time, the little habits count, too: for example, using reusable shopping bags can create much-needed environmental change. Vis says that no one knows what will happen if we keep going down the path we\u2019re on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe fact that we don\u2019t really know is kind of scary in and of itself,\u201d she says. \u201cHopefully we don\u2019t get to that point.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it\u2019s a timely subject matter, which is part of the reason the museum decided to put the exhibit together, says Vis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe spend a lot of time researching and exploring with the public our history and our interactions with the oceans in many different ways,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vis says this is a prominent topic, considering how humans have been treating oceans for the last hundred years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s quite mind-boggling,\u201d says Vis about the short period of time that it has taken us to do so much. \u201cThat was one thing when I started doing the research that just hit me: \u2018Wow, these are such massive numbers that we\u2019re looking at right now,\u2019 and it\u2019s just absolutely overwhelming at first.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Vis started breaking the situation down, asking herself what she could do as an individual, and what the museum could do as an organization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou just hope to inspire change from there,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch<\/em>
Until Sunday, October 27
$8 student rate, Maritime Museum of BC
mmbc.bc.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is exactly what it sounds like it is: 80,000 tonnes of our shit floating in the ocean. Broken down, that\u2019s the weight of roughly 500 jumbo jets, or about 250 pieces of garbage for every human being walking this planet. The Maritime Museum of BC\u2019s exhibit The Great Pacific Garbage […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":17782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,232],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life","category-june-12-2019"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17783,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17781\/revisions\/17783"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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