Save Our Ocean! Clean Up Garbage Island!

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of marine debris in the North Pacific Gyre, and is also known as the Plastic soup, the Eastern Garbage Patch, and the Pacific Trash Vortex.

The center of the North Pacific Gyre is a relatively stationary region of the Pacific Ocean (the area it occupies is often referred to as the horse latitudes). The circular rotation around it draws waste material in and has led to the accumulation of flotsam and other debris. While historically this debris has biodegraded, the gyre is now accumulating vast quantities of plastic and marine debris. Rather than biodegrading, plastic photodegrades, disintegrating in the ocean into smaller and smaller pieces. These pieces, still polymers, eventually become individual molecules, which are still not easily digested.[1] Some plastics photodegrade into other pollutants.

The gyre is discussed in Alan Weisman's The World Without Us as an example of the near-indestructibility of discarded plastic.

Impact on wildlife

The floating particles also resemble zooplankton, which can lead to them being consumed by jellyfish, thus entering the ocean food chain. In samples taken from the gyre in 2001, the mass of plastic exceeded that of zooplankton (the dominant animal life in the area) by a factor of six. Many of these long-lasting pieces end up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals.

For several years ocean researcher Charles Moore has been investigating a concentration of floating plastic debris in the North Pacific Gyre. He has reported concentrations of plastics on the order of 3,340,000 pieces/kmē with a mean mass of 5.1kg/kmē collected using a manta trawl with a rectangular opening of 0.9m x 0.15m at the surface. Trawls at depths of 10m found less than half, consisting primarily of monofilament line fouled with diatoms and other plankton.[3]

Estimate of the size of the patch varies from the size of Texas[4] to twice as large as the continental United States.[5] Researcher Dr Marcus Eriksen believes the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is two areas of rubbish that are linked. Eriksen says the gyre stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the Northern Pacific to near the coast of Japan[6].

The Independent newspaper stated that Moore estimates there are 100 million tons of flotsam in the North Pacific Gyre.

Moore estimates that 80% of the garbage comes from land-based sources, and 20% from ships at sea. He says that currents carry debris from the east coast of Asia to the center of the gyre in a year or less, and debris from the west coast of North America in about five years

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of marine debris in the North Pacific Gyre, and is also known as the Plastic soup, the Eastern Garbage Patch, and the Pacific Trash Vortex.

The center of the North Pacific Gyre is a relatively stationary region of the Pacific Ocean (the area it occupies is often referred to as the horse latitudes). The circular rotation around it draws waste material in and has led to the accumulation of flotsam and other debris. While historically this debris has biodegraded, the gyre is now accumulating vast quantities of plastic and marine debris. Rather than biodegrading, plastic photodegrades, disintegrating in the ocean into smaller and smaller pieces. These pieces, still polymers, eventually become individual molecules, which are still not easily digested.[1] Some plastics photodegrade into other pollutants.

The gyre is discussed in Alan Weisman's The World Without Us as an example of the near-indestructibility of discarded plastic.

Impact on wildlife

The floating particles also resemble zooplankton, which can lead to them being consumed by jellyfish, thus entering the ocean food chain. In samples taken from the gyre in 2001, the mass of plastic exceeded that of zooplankton (the dominant animal life in the area) by a factor of six. Many of these long-lasting pieces end up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals.

For several years ocean researcher Charles Moore has been investigating a concentration of floating plastic debris in the North Pacific Gyre. He has reported concentrations of plastics on the order of 3,340,000 pieces/kmē with a mean mass of 5.1kg/kmē collected using a manta trawl with a rectangular opening of 0.9m x 0.15m at the surface. Trawls at depths of 10m found less than half, consisting primarily of monofilament line fouled with diatoms and other plankton.[3]

Estimate of the size of the patch varies from the size of Texas[4] to twice as large as the continental United States.[5] Researcher Dr Marcus Eriksen believes the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is two areas of rubbish that are linked. Eriksen says the gyre stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the Northern Pacific to near the coast of Japan[6].

The Independent newspaper stated that Moore estimates there are 100 million tons of flotsam in the North Pacific Gyre.

Moore estimates that 80% of the garbage comes from land-based sources, and 20% from ships at sea. He says that currents carry debris from the east coast of Asia to the center of the gyre in a year or less, and debris from the west coast of North America in about five years