The rangers were able to make out the writing on the decades old card. Photo: Kim Norris
During a beach clean-up late last year, Tjaltjraak Rangers made a discovery of global significance.
Healthy Country Plan Coordinator and plastic pollution expert Dr Jenn Lavers said it was at Cape Le Grand beach when amongst almost 3000 pieces of plastic the Ranger Jeremy Smith found a piece the size of a credit card.
Being a plastic pollution expert, Dr Lavers said she suspected the object was a drift card.
“Many decades ago, before GIS and satellites when marine scientists wanted to learn about ocean currents they would use drift cards,” she said.
Dr Lavers said drift cards were pieces of plastic marine scientists would intentionally put into the ocean.
“If you put thousands of these things into the ocean, they would end up all over the world,” she said.
Dr Lavers said she followed up the team’s discovery with hours of research until she just happened to find original research papers from the drift card experiment.
“There it was,” she said.
“A sketch of the card in a paper published in the Journal of Marine Research way back in 1965.
“Included in the paper is a map showing the location where 1,050 of these cards were released off the coast of South Africa in October of 1964.
Dr Lavers said she was able to track down a researcher at the Nelson Mandela University in South Africa who “just so happens” to be writing a paper about drift cards.
She said Tjaltjraak Rangers would be working with the researcher in coming months to co-publish the paper.
As well as being able to provide insight into sixty years of ocean currents, Dr Lavers said the card was a lesson of how long plastic lasts in the ocean.
She said time had done little to break down the card which was still legible.
“Plastics are designed and manufactured to last a very long time, and we should all be very mindful of when we use these products,” she said.
