Lecture on Plastic Pollution

Microplastic researcher, Dorothy Horn, SCUBA diving in the Cook Islands. | Photo courtesy of Dorothy Horn.

Environmental scientist Dorothy Horn will speak about plastic pollution in the ocean on Saturday, Dec. 8 at 1 p.m. at the Cape Perpetua Visitor Center (2400 Hwy 101, about three miles south of Yachats). Her talk is part of the Cape Perpetua Speaker Series.  The event is free and open to all; a day pass is required to park at the visitor center.

Dorothy will talk about the plastic pollution problem in the ocean, how it breaks down into microplastics as well as other sources of microplastic pollution. She will share the detrimental effects she has found and discuss the dangers to marine and possible human health effects. She will also discuss how this is not only a health issue but an economic one for folks that depend on the ocean for their livelihood and there are many things we can do to combat plastic pollution.

Horn is a PhD candidate at Portland State University, studying under Dr. Elise Granek in the Environmental Science & Management Dept. She is doing her microplastic research along the coast of Oregon and possibly back to the Cook Islands in the South Pacific where she first encountered this problem.

She graduated from California State University Channel Islands in 2016 with a B.S. in Environmental Science and Resource Management with a minor in Biology.  She loves research and sharing what she learns to effect change for a better environment.  For her senior capstone at CSU Channel Islands, she explored the effects of microplastics in Sand Crabs (Emerita analoga) along the California coastline.  She has discovered that Sand Crabs ingest microfibers and micro plastics and are an effective entrance of these pollutants into the food web.  Horn is continuing her research this summer to look for possible interference in reproduction and predator avoidance by the crabs' ingestion of microplastics.

For any questions, contact Tara DuBois at capeperpetuacommunications@gmail.com.