 Oh everyone, we're back. We're live on this beautiful Tuesday morning and we're excited to be young talents making way here on Fintech. We talk about things that matter to Hawai'i, to our community, with the students, with the brilliant school students of the schools and their science projects as well. Now the other day I was watching a truly heartbreaking scene, a video of a green sea turtle that was struggling to nest on a plastic debris field beach on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. And that scene really touched me because it was so powerful image that the plastic we use in our daily life can really be lethal to marine life and the creatures that live in the environment as well. And so today we're talking about plastics here in Hawai'i and the conditions of our beaches. And we have a student from Mililani High School joining us, Jasmine Chase. Welcome to the show Jasmine. Nice to have you here today. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And so, you know, this, Jasmine is a VIP, you know, because she's the winner of the Central Oahu Science District Fair. She's a finalist at the State of Hawai'i Science and Engineering Fair, which is on Thursday, so better be ready for that. And I believe on Thursday, and I believe you're also going to the International Science Fair. So we are excited to learn more about the conditions of plastics here in Hawai'i. So why is plastics a problem? So I think that plastics, even though, you know, we use them in our daily lives, they're used for packaging, and they're also in our consumer products, which is even toothpaste. But they're a problem because when you wash plastics down the drain, or even when you throw them away in the ocean, what happens, especially with microplastics, which are plastics that are less than five millimeters in size. The tiny, tiny bits. Tiny plastics is that they can be eaten by animals, even as small as plankton. Plankton can eat these microplastics. And what happens is because plastics are hydrophobic, they can soar pollutants to them. And these pollutants are also passing along with the plastics throughout the food chain. And when more animals eat the animals that already consume plastics, it just keeps building up. And eventually humans can even be hurt by this problem. So it's a huge global issue that really needs to be looked into. The plastic doesn't biodegradate easily because it passes on to different animals larger size. So these plastics can basically be kind of eternally if it's sent into the environment. So I was actually looking at a study just a few days ago, and I was saying that styrofoam degrades about 50 years. But plastic water bottles can stay around for longer than 100 years. So I think it said 600 years. But it's a long time to be in our oceans. And plastics became really popular in the 1970s. So you can imagine they've been in the oceans a long time and they're going to stay there for a long time. Wow. Yeah. Okay, so it's a very serious problem that we need to think about and address. So what did you do as part of this award-winning science project? So what I basically did was I studied plastics and sediment. So I tested different beaches around Oahu to see the prevalence of this problem on islands. There have only been a few previous studies done on this. So it's a real gap that we need to fill in determining how big this problem is on Oahu. I believe we have some slides. Let's have our first slide up so we can see. Oh, okay. So what is this? All right. So this is a slide that shows the different locations that previous microplastic sediment studies have been done in. And as you can see, there's only four real locations that I could find at least that studies have been conducted at. And the problem is we can't really see where plastics are most prevalent in, which means that we don't know enough about the issue. And especially because all of these different studies, and this is actually only three different studies, they use different methodologies. And one was even conducted in 2004 and the other two in 2016, which means that there's a large time gap and difference in methodologies. They're old, yeah. Yeah, so they can't easily be compared is the problem. Right, okay. So you followed this previous research that has been carried out and then you kept going. Is that right? Yeah, so I'm actually in this class called AP Research. It's a new class this year. It's part of a larger program called AP Capstone. And what our teachers encourage us to do and what the College Board encourages us to do is find a gap in research so you can pick any topic, whether it be in science or in social studies or anything, and you fill the gap with your own research. This is at Mililani High School. At Mililani High School. We say hello to all the teachers at Mililani High School, and particularly Tyson Kikugawa, who is here in our studio today. So maybe let's have a look at your second slide so we can really see your methodology if you want. So this is your work, yeah? Well, I was helped by many people throughout the way. So I was helped by Dr. Royer at the UH Manoa University, and she taught me a bit about her methodology and her methodology is what I adapted to use in my project. So I ended up testing four beaches across the island. We're looking at them here, yeah. In December. So these are just kind of, it's kind of a small sample. It's only four beaches, so one from each side to see the prevalence. And this is kind of like a baseline data so that I could test further as soon as I made sure I knew the methodology and I knew how to execute it. Okay, so this was basically to test it. Okay, let's see, we have another slide where we can basically see the whole island and all of the locations that you sampled as part of this study. Yeah, so in my January sampling, I sampled eight different beaches, eight from each side. And I was almost one of three days to try to eliminate time as an issue, so it was a lot of driving. Oh, driving all over, okay. Yeah, I'm really thankful that my parents allowed me to do this project and they were willing to drive me everywhere. It was a lot of strain on them. But I tested the two beaches from each other island to kind of see where plastic was the most prevalent. And then from there, I looked at the prevalence of different colors of plastics to see the effects of photo-degregation, which is the effect of UV rays over time, and the different sizes to see if micropostics was less than five millimeters, or macro-postics, which I defined is greater than five millimeters or most prevalent. And I also looked at the different shapes and sizes of them too. Now, you were talking about pieces which are very small, five millimeters or smaller. I mean, I'm thinking, you know, even the audience must be thinking, oh, you know, how do you actually find these tiny pieces of plastics on a beach, you know, where we have sand drains, we have coral particles and tiny rocks and everything. How do you actually sample the plastics? Yeah, so I think this is actually on the next slide. Oh, we have one more. Yeah, so this kind of shows how I sampled the different beaches. So it was following Dr. Royer's procedures for sampling. So what she does in her study is she has different quadrats, which are different squares of sampling. So you start out from the low tide line of the beach. We're looking at a beach that would be observed from above. So you go from the low tide line, and then you're working away from the beach as you go. And it's a 60 centimeter by 60 centimeter sample, and you go 10 centimeters deep. Oh, okay. And then you go at the low tide line, then seven meters up from that, you sample your third quadra, and in between is your second. So you're getting kind of a look at where about the low tide line would be for most beaches, and then the high tide line would be for most beaches, and just about a middle, too. Okay, okay. And I think we have some pictures of you sampling this. Oh, okay. So where are you here? This? I think this is actually at Sand Island. I'm not exactly sure, though. I went to a lot of beaches. But at each beach, so I would sample from the different squares. So I would scoop up and then put it into the bucket that you see. The yellow one. And then from there. And then from there, I would sift through it. So I'd have one of my parents help me shake through the plastics. And then from there, I would see, I would get everything larger than about three millimeters. So I was unfortunately not able to sample microplastics less than three millimeters. But I had to distinguish between shell and plastic. And if I wasn't sure, then I put it in my sample anyway, just to double check. And then from there, I'd collect those in bags, and then I'd take them to my lab procedure. Okay. So you collected all these plastics from all these surveys from, you know, different beaches across across the island. You said it took three days for you to actually, you know, gather all this data and information. And then you went back to the lab, your lab, I guess it's a Mililani High School, yeah? Yeah, so. Okay. So here, yeah, we're looking at, I guess this is the lab. Yeah. Yeah. So my chemistry teacher, Mrs. Siddha Siddha, she was gracious enough to let me use her classroom to sort through all the plastics again, because she actually helped me again last year with my previous project. And what I did, if we could pull up the slide again, is what I did is I added all the slide before that. Yep. So I added a salt solution in so that all the plastics would float and that all the shell and the sand would sink. And then I dried it out. And from there, that's when I sorted through all the plastics. And I. Oh, that's how you ultimately do it. Okay. So you differentiate the plastics from the other. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So I actually followed a procedure by NOAA. So I had Mr. Mark Manuel, who is the director here in the Pacific Region, of NOAA's marine debris program. I had him help me through the procedure. So he sent me this link to the procedure that NOAA officials follow for organizing and sorting leuphastic from sand sediments. Wow. Yeah. It's wonderful to see that the whole community was involved. Definitely a lot of people helped me. So, Jasmine, you carried out this project for monitoring plastics on our beaches because, as we said, it's important, it's causing problems to our ecosystems as well. What did you find? So I ended up finding that plastics were most prevalent on the east and north sides. So I had a big outlier on the east side, and that was Colombo Beach Park. And I found over 2,000 plastics just in those three squares that I sampled. And that's not a lot of sand to be sampled. And he says, yeah, you said, I mean, the square 10 centimeters deep, so we're talking. Yeah, that's not a lot of space. And especially if you imagine that each plastic that I found that has the potential to go throughout a chain of animals and even end up back to us. And that's transporting different chemicals as I was saying before. So each plastic really makes a difference. So by picking them up, I think that that was a good part of the project for me too, is eliminating the threat that they could pose. Right. I believe we have a picture where we can see the samples that you collected. Oh, okay. So what are we looking at here? So here I have the sample from Quadret 3 on Colombo Beach Park. So Quadret 3 usually has the most amount of plastics that's nearer to the high tide line. And here we see microplastics on the left top hand corner. And there were over 600, I think there were of the microplastics here. And those are the ones less than five millimeters again. And then on the right, we see many, many macroplastics. So those are plastics that were over or equal to five millimeters in this study. And on the left bottom corner, we see the larger macroplastics that were over 20 millimeters or equal to 20 millimeters in size. And you found all of this just in a tiny quadrant in a tiny square or cube, I guess, of the one of our beaches. Yeah. So that was all from just one of those 60 centimeter by 60 centimeter by 10 centimeter squares, all of that on just one beach, one square. It's a lot of plastic. It's impressive. It's impressive. Yeah. So you found these plastics. What are some possible, why is this plastic there? Why is it on our beaches, in our sand, in our waters? What is happening? So plastics are used in a lot of consumer products, such as toothpaste, a lot of things we don't think that they're going to be in. So when those washed on the drain, that affects it. And also our clothing. So when you wear polyester clothing, every time it goes into the laundry machine, a lot of fibers from the clothing is going down the drain. So that's something we don't really think about. And also the things like packaging or different sorts of natural disasters like the tsunami in Japan that happened a few years back, that unleashes a lot of plastic debris into our oceans. It goes into the ocean. It stays there, basically. Yeah. So there are many gyres that have plastic in them, just like swirling about. And I think our Pacific one is one of the largest ones. So what is exactly is one of these gyros? It's the currents gathered together. Yeah. So the currents just basically feeding this like whirlwind, not whirlwind, but like pool of like plastic just floating around and around. And we're not talking about like small pools either. They're saying that it's three times the size of France, the one in the Pacific. Wow. So it's a huge amount of plastic. So it's a massive amount of plastics floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Yeah. It's like an island of plastic. Yeah. Yeah. Here on Think Tech, Hawaii, we're talking about plastics on our beaches in Hawaii as well as in the world. We're learning from Jasmine Chase, a student from Mililani High School, and the finalist at the upcoming State of Hawaii Science and Engineering Fair. And it's time for us to take a break now, but we'll be back for more. Aloha. I'm Kili Ikeena and I'm here every other week on Mondays at 2 o'clock PM on Think Tech, Hawaii's Hawaii Together. In Hawaii Together, we talk with some of the most fascinating people in the islands about working together, working together for a better economy, government and society. So I invite you into our conversation every other Monday at 2 PM on Think Tech, Hawaii Broadcast Network. Join us for Hawaii Together. I'm Kili Ikeena. Aloha. Welcome to Sister Power. I'm your host, Sharon Thomas Yarbrough, where we motivate, educate, empower and inspire all women. We are live here every other Thursday at 4 PM and we welcome you to join us here at Sister Power. Aloha and thank you. And we're back. We are here at Think Tech, Hawaii talking about plastics with Jasmine Chase from Mililani High School, the finalist at our upcoming State of Hawaii Science and Engineering Fair. We're learning from Jasmine about this, well, it's not only Hawaii, it's a global issues, this plastic that ends up into our oceans and it eats and it's eaten basically by animals, tiny animals and it can go up to the food chain and to eventually get to us as well. Now, Jasmine, you were talking, you mentioned in our break something about your hypothesis and the ways the distributions of the plastics you found along the, our coastlines of the island of Oahu is affected by water currents. So I believe we have a slide where we're seeing a map with the currents. If you can tell us something about that. Oh, I believe it's the next one, I think. Okay. The one after that. Here we go. It's all right. So here we see different ocean currents taken from the day before my January experiment took place and you can see the lighter blue and then as you go from dark blue to the lighter colors in red, that means that the ocean currents are going faster. So if we look at where the ocean currents are going the fastest, that's on the east side and the north side. So part of the reason that I think that what I found is that the east and the north side had the most amount of plastics is because they're being carried by the currents and the fastest these currents are, I think that that that affects it too, where plastic is going to build up at. And especially if you look at Kailua and Kanyohi Bay, it's going right into the bay and we didn't see any currents coming out of it at least on the three days that I studied. So I only have this one day here shown, but we didn't see any currents coming out. So that could have affected how the plastics build up and over time the currents do change. So that's one reason why my experiment is slightly, it's only going to really apply to the winter months because the currents kind of totally change in the summer. So if I could, I would do more research in different seasons. I guess it's also important to monitor, as you said, this over time because you did this in the winter, but as well other seasons. Are you planning on carrying out more research, more surveys about the distributions of plastics in the upcoming month? Yeah, so I'd love to do it in the summer because I'm actually really busy right now with the state science for and other things like that, but I'd love to conduct a similar experiment in the summer even tracking the accumulation over time, which is what one of my mentors, Dr. Royer, was doing. She's studying the accumulation of plastics on Kuhuku Beach over time so she can see the different trends. She goes there every week. So I think that's a really good way to get data that shows how plastics are accumulating on Oahu. Is this trend, you think this trend is increasing or decreasing now, this accumulation of plastics? You think it's getting up or going up or going down? Personally, I don't have any data to back the statement, but I think it's it's increasing because over time we're producing more and more plastic and even though there are efforts like beach cleanups, how I did, it's just not enough to combat such a big problem and especially when we have such a single use and then throw away consumer culture, the problem I think is definitely increasing even with regulations being passed by some countries. It's definitely a global issue that's continuing to grow. We talked last week with another student from Mililani High School. We talked about water purifications when it goes down into the pipes and it's purified. I'm thinking now for plastics, I guess recycling would be an effective solution. How could we potentially decrease this trend of plastics that ends up into our oceans? What are some possible things that we all could do as people and citizens to reduce this amount of plastics that go into their oceans? Well, I think as consumers we can definitely stay away from products that are single use. I know that's definitely difficult because there are so many products that have plastic packaging that you just throw away after use, but things like straws, you don't need a straw to drink your drink. You can just drink it through a cup and those are things that just go down to the ocean and then break down into smaller bits. But I think as a larger community we definitely need to find a way to filter out these plastics and also start the source. Even if we collect plastics through the drainage system, that still doesn't eliminate the fact that plastic is prevalent pretty much everywhere. We still need to clean it up. It's the culture of plastics if you want. You said 1970 began this trend, this use of... Yeah, so in the 1970s it's definitely when it started to pick up the single use culture, but that's not really when plastic was first made, but that is definitely when it started becoming more public, I think. I haven't really done too much research into the history of plastic, but it's definitely something to learn more about. You mentioned that as these plastics, you know that we throw away, it goes down into our pipes, it ends up in rivers or oceans and then it stays there. It gathers into these massive swirls if you want of floating plastics in our oceans. Some animals get entangled into them. You mentioned some of them even eat the plastics. Now why are they so much attracted to them, to do the plastics? What happens to the animals that get... why do... Why do they continue to eat them? So most of the microplastics are actually the same size around as different prey of different animals like fish and even they're about the same size as plankton, some of them. So I was just reading an article talking about how filter feeders such as whales are really consuming a lot of plastics and how it affects them is when animals eat plastics and plastics having the toxins that they've absorbed in the ocean water, they can actually get... I think an Australian study found 12.5% of the chemicals absorbed in the plastic so that transfers over to the fish, at least that's what this study found. So that can affect their reproductive systems, it can affect their neurological, you know, their brain and everything like that. It can impact a lot of different systems depending on the animal, I think it differs. But they've been found in various different animals from zooplankton to coral polyps to whales to fish, pretty much everyone. I think I also found that plastic, there's been a research study that says that plastic is in our bottled water and tap water. It found that 94% of tap water and bottled water in the United States has microplastics in it and we're not talking the type of plastics that I snappled more of less than 0.1 millimeter range. So it's really, really small plastic. This is such a hot topic, an important topic for us all and it's great to, you know, to learn from you today during this conversation. But we are about to go on to the state of Hawaii science fair that's on Thursday. So, you know, we're excited. What can you, can you tell us something about how you're, you know, getting ready and what is going to happen there? Well, I have already finished the poster that I will be displaying at the fair, but I also have to, I've done a lot of data analysis that I didn't really have in my district fair or in my EP research project so far. So that's, it's a continuous work in progress. So I'm going to be working on a binder that I can display all my data in with the different color distributions and type distributions and a lot of just things that we need to see to better understand the plastic pollution problem. All the best for this, all the best. Thank you. You know, this is, as I said, very hot topic today, plastics in our oceans. But where do you see yourself in the future? You know, now you are in the high school, but going on, would you be interested in doing something science related or continue to try and reduce the amount of plastics in our oceans or? Definitely. So microplastic research is definitely a point of interest for me. So last year, I had a study on the amount of microplastics in toothpaste. And the reason I've been interested in microplastics is actually because of one of my extracurricular teachers in the eighth grade, Mrs. Quahara. She was telling us about microplastics and how they're affecting our ecosystems. And so in 10th grade, when I got the choice, I chose to find out how much microplastics are in our toothpaste. And now I'm working on this study. And it's just something that's really interesting to me. So I think I'd even want to become an environmental engineer because I'm also involved in robotics. And I like, I would want to be an engineer, but I also like environmental issues. So I think it's really a great merge of what I'm interested in. Sounds like an exciting, exciting career. That's good. All the best. All the best for this. Now, it's almost time to end this conversation today here on Think Tech. But what would you like to tell our audience? Something real easy, something to wrap up and to let us know of something that we can do every day to reduce the use of plastics. Every day. Well, I already did mention about the straws, but I'd say that when you're going to the store, we now have the plastic bag ban, but you can still purchase it at some stores, I believe. Try to bring reusable bags. Try to avoid plastic packaging. There are other alternatives. And also a good tip is when you go to the beach, you may not see it and at some beaches you really do as I figured out. But you can just look around and even you collecting a few plastics, each of those plastics really could impact many animals' lives. So if you just pick up one plastic, you're making a big difference. So that's just a tip for going to the beach. Thank you, Jasmine. Thank you. We've been learning so much from you today, your work at Mililani High School. We wish you all the best for the upcoming State Fair. Good luck. And you've been watching Young Talents Making Way here on Fintech, Hawaii. We've been learning about plastics today. And remember, a change begin from you to solve these problems with plastics in our oceans. We'll be back for more. Stay tuned.