Floating Garbage Patch at Sea Size of Africa

[LoungeMachine]

Landfill in the Sea
Ocean's Food Chain Threatened by Constant Influx of Refuse
By BRIAN ROONEY

LONG BEACH, Calif., March 26, 2008
If by chance you are missing a basketball, you may be glad to know that it has been found in the Pacific Ocean.

(Charles Moore/The Algalita Marine Research Foundation)It was there along with giant tangles of rope, sunken snack-food bags, a plastic six-pack ring and thousands upon thousands of plastic bags, billowing under the ocean surface like jellyfish.

And that's not all.

There is a floating garbage dump about the size of Africa created by Pacific currents now carrying refuse from North America, Asia and the islands, concentrating it into a swirl of flotsam estimated to contain 3.5 million tons of junk, 80 percent of which is plastic.

Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, is an independently wealthy man who decided to spend his life studying the ocean. Ten years ago he was credited with discovering The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the oceanic dump of the Pacific Rim.

Related
DiCaprio's Environmental MissionHis organization is dedicated to restoring the marine environment. Among the many items he has pulled out of the water include: melted milk crates, a suitcase, fistfuls of toothbrushes, golf balls, glue sticks and brightly colored plastic umbrella handles.

"They are throwaway products," Moore said. "They are cheap now. An umbrella used to be something you might keep for a lifetime. Now an umbrella is for one storm."


Moore has focused his study on an area of the garbage patch that is twice the size of Texas, about a thousand miles from North America near the Hawaiian islands.


Plastic Soup
Sailing his research catamaran named the Alguita, Moore and a small crew drag a trawling device through the garbage patch to study the content of ocean water.

They find what he describes as a "plastic soup." In some cases there is more plastic in the waters than plankton, the basic food organism of the ocean.

"It has some zooplankton. But overwhelmingly what we're seeing here are plastic particles," Moore said. "The ocean has become a plastic soup. This is the soup."

continued at http://www.abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4528488&page=1

[LoungeMachine]

Plastic Waste is Turning the North Pacific Ocean Into a Garbage Dump


Tuesday, March 25, 2008 by: Tom Mosakowski (

(NaturalNews) A swirling, floating garbage dump in the North Pacific Ocean twice the size of the United States has been noticed in recent years and is growing at a swift pace. It is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The number of plastic pieces in the Pacific Ocean has tripled in the last ten years and the size of the accumulation is set to double in the next ten unless the use of disposable plastics is reduced.

While this “trash continent” is not thick enough to be walked on, from the ocean surface to a depth of 30 feet, the plastic is floating at a concentration six times that of its neighboring zooplankton, the most abundant animal type of life both by number and total weight. The plastic can reach concentrations of a million pieces per square mile.

Most of this plastic debris originates from land as trash, being swept out by rivers or the tide. About one fifth comes from ships' cargo and oil platforms. Toothbrushes, cigarette lighters and syringes have accumulated here and everything from Nike sneakers to plastic yellow ducks has been lost from cargo ships.

Due to undesirable wind patterns, most sailors have avoided this area and a natural lack of nutrients in this ocean region has given fishermen reason to look for fish elsewhere. The translucent quality of the plastic just below the water’s surface prevents satellites from detecting it. These two factors have prevented the sheer vastness of the garbage accumulation from being noticed until recently.

This region of the ocean is called the North Pacific Gyre. Warm tropical air descends in a clockwise rotation over this vast area of over 10 million square miles. These wind patterns create comparable ocean currents which circle around a center point between California and Japan. The nature of the North Pacific Gyre has created two garbage patches on either side of the Hawaiian Islands. The Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch is between California and Hawaii and is twice the size of Texas. The Western Pacific Garbage Patch on the other side of Hawaii is smaller, but still massive. The patches are connected by a 6,000 mile long current which itself can accumulate significant amounts of trash.

All debris that comes within this gyre can be caught in the rotation and concentrated toward the center. The result: 100 million tons of plastic circulating in the northern Pacific according to Charles Moore, the American oceanographer who discovered the extent of this accumulation. This is equal to all the plastic produced by the world in one year.

Until recently, debris in this region did not accumulate because it was easily broken down by microorganisms. However, the production of plastics and their prolific distribution across the globe for the last few decades has been the trump card played to the decomposers of the ocean. Unlike wood and cotton, which can be broken down into such things as carbon dioxide and water within months to years, nothing in the ocean can biodegrade plastics.

The plastic from the 1950s that floated out to the ocean is still there in pieces and will be for a long time.

In the sea, forces of the sun, the waves and collisions with other solids break plastics into smaller pieces and eventually into individual molecules, but this is not the same as biodegradation. As the pieces get smaller they are still plastic and become more harmful. They act like sponges for many chemical toxins, such as DDT and PCBs, and concentrate the toxins up to a million times the levels found in the surrounding water. The plastic pieces, whether mistaken for food or so microscopic as to be unavoidable, are consumed by seabirds and fish, which in turn make it to our dinner plates. This can have disastrous consequences for food webs and human health. Many of these chemicals have hormone disrupting properties that affect both animals and humans.

The world produces at least 100 million tons of plastic each year and about ten percent makes it to the oceans. However, the problem lies deeper than just the surface. About 70 percent of plastic products sink to the bottom. Of the 30 percent that floats, most of it aggregates into patches within gyres.

There has been evidence of a high concentration of plastic in at least one of the other four major ocean gyres in the world.

Great quantities of the trash from these garbage patches have washed up on shores, covering beaches in California and especially the islands of Hawaii.

Chris Parry, a public education program manager who works for the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco said, "At this point, cleaning it up isn't an option. It's just going to get bigger as our reliance on plastics continues... The long-term solution is to stop producing as much plastic products at home and change our consumption habits."

Cleaning up this vast quantity of plastic and garbage would cost billions of dollars. Despite the high price tag, the consequences of creating so much permanent trash should be talked about.

Everyday changes can help to limit the growth of this garbage patch. Reducing your use and purchasing of plastic products will lower the production of plastics. Properly disposing of plastics that you come into contact with will slow their accumulation in the environment.

Sources:

((http://science.howstuffworks.com/great-...)

((http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/master...)

((http://www.greenpeace.org/international...)

((http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c...)


About the author
Tom Mosakowski is working toward completing his BS in Biochemistry. He can be contacted at TomMosakowski@gmail.com

[VanHalener]

Makes me sick to my stomach.

[Douglas T.]

Recycle your garbage people!

[Baby's On Fire]

A fraction of the money wasted on the Bush / Cheney Criminal Enterprise and mass murder in Iraq could have been used to clean this mess up.

[Julius]

That's not metal. :(

[Nitro Express]

General Motors is doing research on turning waste plastic into fuel. Most plastic is derived from oil.

The decking on my house is made from recycled PET plastic bottles. You would think the stuff would be cheaper.

Last time I was in Mexico, every river flowing into the ocean was full of plastic bottles just heading towards the ocean. The US isn't the only country at fault on this one. Mexico still dumps tons of raw sewage and garbage into the ocean.

[Nickdfresh]

Plastic polymers are similar to those used in the best synthetic oils...

[MERRYKISSMASS2U]

We are killing our planet.

[Nitro Express]

Originally posted by MERRYKISSMASS2U
We are killing our planet.

We have polluted some of it but in the end, the planet will go on and evolve like it always has. We will go extinct.

[Nitro Express]

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[Nitro Express]

Maybe the earth spawned us because it wanted plastic for itself but couldn't make it without us? :D

[binnie]

Originally posted by Nitro Express
Maybe the earth spawned us because it wanted plastic for itself but couldn't make it without us? :D

Sounds like the plot for a movie.

[thome]

I just flew back from there and I must brag... I am the new owner of 475,000 acres of "new" beach front property!!

Seems all you have to do is use your squatters rights, by taking an crap on it and then filing a claim..

To bad the rest of you don't crap.

[FORD]

Stop using plastic when and where ever possible.

Plastic drink bottles? Who the fuck needs them? Buy glass bottles if you can get 'em. Aluminum cans if you can't. Either one is easily recyclable.

Besides, the shit is made from OIL. Something we all need to use less of anyway.

[Va Beach VH Fan]

I know the Navy has improved over the years, specifically with plastics, but I vividly remember as soon as we got 50 miles offshore, it was trash call.... Going out there in absolutely pitch black darkness (so the ship doesn't get spotted) and throwing trash overboard....