by Steve Desroches
Laura Ludwig has seen a lot as the Provincetown-based Center for Coastal Studies director of its marine debris and plastics program. And it reveals a lot about the detritus of humanity. Beverage bottles, balloons, and fishing gear—they’re all common and documented to add to data to better understand how plastic pollution ends up in the ocean in the first place. But in 2021, Ludwig and her team began to find small bright yellow tubing that looked like Weed Wacker trimming thread. Over six months, thousands of pieces were removed from the ocean, but no one could identify exactly what it was, so Ludwig recorded it as “mystery yellow tube.” But then she showed the materials to someone from the Army Corps of Engineers and they instantly identified it as explosive shock tubing used in a massive dredging project in Boston Harbor. It is now estimated that 20,000 feet may have been unintentionally released into the ocean, says Ludwig. And it’s not just washing up on the Cape, but along the east coast of North America and now Europe.
Every action we take as individuals, and also as a collective society, affects our environment for better or for worse. The detailed data collection of the Center for Coastal Studies, as well as its marine debris cleaning program, can feel a bit like a literal drop in the ocean considering the Herculean scale of the problem of marine plastic pollution. This Earth Day the Center for Coastal Studies is partnering with Waters Edge Cinema in its presentation of two documentaries that explore the fragility of our oceans, the scale of the problem, and how we here on the Cape tip can respond.
The films in question are Women & the Wind, which follows three women sailing a catamaran across the North Atlantic following the Gulf Stream and the flow of plastic it carries to Europe and Last of the Right Whales, which explores the efforts to save the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale and features staff from the Center for Coastal Studies. Both films explore the issue of plastics in our oceans, and more specifically, the area of the ocean those of us that live in Provincetown look out onto every day.
“The driving force behind it all is money,” says Ludwig. “Plastic is just so cheap. There’s no incentive to stop producing and using plastic. Our waste system is built to fail. Plastic is so light that it blows around and lands somewhere. Everywhere.”
Just where does one begin to clean up the ocean? In 2013 Ludwig began the Ghost Gear Removal Program, which removes and records lost or discarded fishing gear. Fixed-gear fishing is prohibited in Massachusetts waters from February 1 to May 1, annually, to protect the North Atlantic right whales. The marine debris and plastic program takes advantage of this moratorium and partners with local fishermen and lobstermen to find and remove lines, lobster traps, and other gear lost. Since the inception of the program, over 86 tons of ghost gear has been removed from Cape Cod Bay, with still useable materials returned to their owners. Out-of-work fishermen and lobstermen are paid from federal grants (that Ludwig worries may disappear in the slash and burn cuts from the current administration) and funds raised by the Center for Coastal Studies, but the fishing community does absorb some of the costs themselves. Ludwig stresses that working with the fishing community is what makes this project so successful. And, she adds, the gear that does end up in the ocean is not due to negligence or a disregard for the environment, but rather it is the nature of working on the ocean, as weather, ships, and other unforeseen circumstances can snap traps from their lines or wash something overboard.
“No fisherman worth his salt would choose to lose his gear,” says Ludwig. “It’s expensive.”
Imagining a post-plastic world is hard, if not impossible, to do. Beach clean-up efforts, as well as individuals pledging to always pick up some trash when they visit the beach, are worth doing, but it can feel futile when the next high tide washes up another deposit of plastic and trash on the wrack line. The issue is huge and requires attention from the highest forms of government. And it requires thinking beyond just the environment, but also to social issues, says Ludwig. For instance, the ubiquity of plastic nip bottles polluting our ecosystems is evidence of a larger societal problem of alcoholism. (Ludwig says that Fireball Cinnamon Whisky nips are the single most common item tossed out car windows or otherwise discarded into nature.) Even efforts to curb plastic use can have unintended consequences. Since the marine debris program is hyperspecific, brand names are recorded. As such, the Center for Coastal Studies could see that when 13 towns on Cape Cod banned the commercial sale of single-use water bottles, consumers switched to other beverages, most notably Gatorade, resulting in the same amount of plastic pollution.
There’s reason to feel depressed and defeated, but ultimately Ludwig says she is optimistic. “It’s the people I work with and talk to everyday that keep me optimistic,” says Ludwig. “People care deeply about this. Every person I’ve talked to on a beach clean-up tells me how they’ve changed their behavior. How they use less plastic. It’s hearing stories like that that keeps me optimistic, and that this is something we can actually solve if we work together.”
The Planet Ptown Film Series features a screening of Women & the Wind on Tuesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. and of Last of the Right Whales on Thursday, April 24 at 7:30 p.m. at Waters Edge Cinema, 237 Commercial St., Provincetown. Q & A sessions will follow each film. Tickets ($15.50/$13.50 for seniors and students) are available at the box office and online at provincetownfilm.org/cinema. For more information call 508.487.3456.
