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In the north Pacific gyre, a ring-like system of ocean currents 10 million square miles from the United States and China, there is a garbage patch twice the size of Texas full of plastic bottles, toys and styrene. These items are accumulating and breaking down into small pieces, endangering marine life.
While this is happening a long way from Wilmington, master’s student Bonnie Monteleone has developed a strong connection for UNCW through her study of this issue. A student in the Graduate Liberal Studies program and an office assistant for the Department of Chemistry, Monteleone is one of seven investigators traveling to Bermuda this summer to investigate whether the same problem is happening in the Atlantic gyre.
Monteleone discovered this environmental issue when she read the article “Plastic Ocean,” by Susan Casey, which documented research on the problem by Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. This issue affected her so much that she decided to make it her final graduate project and, as she explained, go “beyond the physical harmful effects on marine life, such as entanglement and ingestion of plastics, and explore the chemical implications of plastics in the food chain.”
Amanda Gonzalez-Moreno, an assistant in the Graduate Student Life office, has been impressed with how Monteleone has approached doing research on this daunting world issue.
”There was no sulking with her, it was all positive action. She created a (video) clip that she posted on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MqQfJn1Z7o) she began writing about it and she put together a large group of people from across the country to develop further research and a documentary film.”
This project has gone far beyond Monteleone’s original expectations. She has been invited to Washington, D.C. and to Capitol Hill to meet with an aide to N.C. Senator Richard Burr and others to discuss the declining health of the oceans and the negative impact of plastic marine debris. This topic is so important to the future health of the planet that it attracted representatives from National Public Radio, National Geographic, Google, the Wyland Foundation, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
“This problem isn’t about me,” Monteleone said, “but it is about a serious global issue that I am a part of at both ends of the spectrum. I helped create the problem and, hopefully, I will be a part of the solution.”
Gonzalez-Moreno, who has gotten to know Monteleone through three graduate courses they have taken together, described her as a “committed, engaged citizen, challenged by today's reality and determined to make a difference.”
As an outstanding staff member and student, Monteleone has received the Staff Council Scholarship and the Dr. Ralph Brauer Award, a travel scholarship that is helping to finance her research trip to Bermuda. She praised the support she has received through the Graduate Liberal Studies program as well as the university’s overall support for recycling and environmental sustainability initiatives.
“With 6.4 billion people on this planet, it doesn’t make any of us less important,” she said. “In fact, it makes each of us more important because each time one of us eats, drinks, uses our car or turns on a light, we affect one another and the environment. So, use less, have more.”
