After spending more than a year focusing on the global crisis of ocean plastic pollution, Canadian artist Douglas Coupland is more optimistic than ever.

As scientists around the world raise critical questions — and answers — on how discarded plastic products impact the oceans, Coupland’s latest exhibit, Vortex, merges art, emotion and science to raise awareness about plastic pollution.

Citing the historic shift away from smoking tobacco indoors as an example, Coupland said he thinks it’s possible for people to stop using one-time use plastics.

“I’ve seen behaviours change on a very, very mass scale, so I’m not cynical about our capacity to change,” he said.

Unlike much of Coupland’s previous work which has been shown in museums, this show is happening at the Vancouver Aquarium, and opens on May 18.

His main piece uses a custom-built pool, plastic garbage found on the beaches of the Haida Gwai islands, and a salvaged Japanese fishing boat, in an effort to give visitors a snapshot of the pacific garbage patch. A hidden machine makes the boat rock and the water undulate, while dry ice placed in a special compartment beside the pool creates a mist on top of the water.

For insurance reasons, Coupland said he knew the piece couldn’t happen in a museum. He needed a venue that could handle the immense amount of water required for the piece.

“It was 50,000 litres of water and it has to be filtered, and it has to be insured,” he said.

It all came together thanks to a synchronicity in timing, said Coupland. Without knowing the Aquarium was already planning a show on plastic pollution, Coupland said he called them up and pitched his idea.

While Coupland said he thinks the social change around plastic use will happen “bit by bit,” Ocean Wise scientist, Peter Ross, is sounding the alarm about plastic “bits” in the water.

In partnership with the Vancouver Aquarium, Ross and about a dozen other scientists are researching “microplastics.”

Ross said the large visible plastic garbage found in the ocean is a crisis because those items get brittle and break down into tiny pieces. Called microplastics, these materials never biodegrade, they just get smaller and smaller, he said.

Microplastics are less than 5 mm in diameter and are similar to microbeads, the tiny plastic balls used in cleaners and cosmetics, and which have recently been banned by the Canadian government. Although he thinks the ban is a good start, Ross said more needs to be done about secondary microplastics.

“Quite honestly, we don’t see a lot of them (the microbeads) in our studies of seawater. What we see a lot of are secondary microplastics which are the breakdown products of larger items.”

According to his latest research, Ross said he and his team analyzed the micro-plastic content of 1 cubic metre of water from the Salish Sea, and found that it contained about 3,200 particles of microplastic. Tiny sea creatures like zooplankton are mistaking these bits of plastic as food, he said.

“It’s rather staggering,” he said.

The zooplankton may eat the microplastics, feel full, and then die because they don’t actually digest the plastic and they fail to eat other food. One in 20 zooplankton have eaten plastic, he said.

Leah Bendell, a marine ecologist at Simon Fraser University, who also studies microplastics, said she’s glad to see a widespread “chronic concern” about plastics, and wants people to adopt a “zero-tolerance” for plastics.

“Somehow we’ve got to get back to where we’re not dependent on plastics. We are literally choking on them, the oceans are just filling up,” Bendell said. “Everywhere you get a chance to make a choice, you choose not to use plastics.”

A cultural shift is already happening in Canada and evident in the push to ban plastic bags and straws, Bendell said. But worldwide change, according to Coupland, will take longer.

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“People can change, but it doesn’t happen everywhere instantly,” he said. “I think it’s going to be at least another 50 years before some really big fundamental change happens with (plastic) materials, or material culture.”

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