Environmental Film Series Screening: A Plastic Ocean

The next film in our series, The Elements: An Annual Environmental Film Series will be A Plastic Ocean, on Monday, November 6, 2017. The film will be shown at 7 pm at Chapman Hall on the campus of Middlesex Community College in Middletown (directions and public transportation). All films are open to the public and free of charge!

As described on the film's website, A Plastic Ocean documents a four-year global odyssey to explore the issue of plastics in our oceans and their effect on marine ecosystems and human health, including endocrine disruption. The producer, Jo Ruxton, joined an expedition to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the North Pacific Gyre, 1500 miles off the coast of San Francisco, to determine its impact. When the expedition discovered free-floating microplastics instead of an anticipated solid mass that could be contained, she knew she had to begin the film that would become A Plastic Ocean. If it was happening in one gyre, they suspected it was happening in all of them. But the filmmakers needed experts to prove it. Scientists were brought in at each stage to analyze the findings from one part of the story to add their data to the overall report on the five gyres. In the center of the Pacific Ocean gyre the researchers found more plastic than plankton. A Plastic Ocean documents the newest science, proving how plastics, once they enter the oceans, break up into small particulates that enter the food chain where they attract toxins like a magnet. These toxins are stored in seafood’s fatty tissues, and eventually consumed by us.

After the film, we welcome you to stay for an informal discussion.