The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Jun 05 2011           Jump To Discussion

LOS ANGELES – Some 1,000 miles off shore floats a stretch of man-made garbage that is larger and wider than the naked eye can see.

When Charles J. Moore returned home from competing in the Transpac Sailing race in 1997, the sailor was stunned to discover an enormous patch of garbage bobbing on top of the Pacific Ocean.

A tangled mesh of plastic containers, fishnets, cans, bags and other debris floated in front of him stretching endlessly.

Scientists examined the area after Moore notified oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who dubbed the area the ‘Eastern Garbage Patch’ and were stunned to discover a collection of garbage in the ocean that spread some 70 million hectares.

The area is known as the North Pacific Gyre and is the place the garbage collects because of constant circling motions of the ocean waters.

Just how much garbage is collecting in the patch isn’t really known.  The environmental protection agency UNEP estimates there are over 15,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer which amounts to around 10,500 lbs of garbage per square mile.

That number is based solely on taking inventory of the large pieces of garbage as it is impossible to count the smaller debris floating in the water.

But according to journalist Jesse Goossens, who wrote a book about ‘the plastic soup’, the floating garbage isn’t the worst problem.

Says Goossens: “The worst is that the garbage breaks up in tiny pieces that is too small to be cleaned up”.

“Marine live and fish swallow these small pieces which give off toxic fumes,” says Goossens.  ”A turtle was found that had eaten half a plastic purse and birds were discovered with their stomachs full with bottle caps.”

“The poisonous fumes from the plastic stays in the seafood and becomes dangerous to people eating that fish and seafood,” Goossens said.

What’s surprising is that less than 20 percent of the floating garbage dump comes directly from ships.  According to the United States Environmental Agency NOAA, the rest of the garbage comes from humans who leave the trash behind on shore lines or throw the garbage in the water.

Much of the garbage comes from natural disasters such as Japan’s recent earthquake when the aftermath Tsunami dragged tons of debris back into the ocean that is currently floating towards the gyre in the Pacific Ocean.

Environmental agencies around the world are collectively working together to minimize the collection of garbage in the Ocean as much as possible by asking local governments to enforce new garbage prevention rules.

In most of the United States a new anti-garbage ruling will go in effect in 2011 that will prohibit grocery markets from packing their goods in plastic bags.

Consumers are also taking initiative to reduce global garbage by using their own bio-degradable shopping bags.

In schools around the world, children are now taught the importance of a clean environment.

 

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