South pacific garbage patch

Governments should concentrate on this rather than useless politics. Well-written article!! Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. What is a garbage patch and what is it made of? When we heal the earth, we heal ourselves David Orr Where are the garbage patches?

When were these garbage patches discovered? The Sea Education Association conducted year long research and documented the North Atlantic garbage patch in the year Charles J. The 5 Gyres project discovered the Indian Ocean garbage patch and the South Atlantic garbage patch in The 5 Gyres project discovered evidence of the South Pacific garbage patch in the year and re-confirmed its existence in the year Who is responsible for the formation of garbage patches?

The species accountable for this; Me, you and almost every human being on this planet. Bharat V Send an email February 24, 2 3 minutes read. The center of the patch has the highest concentration of pollution, with hundreds of kilograms of debris per km 2 in the epicenter, and up to 10 kg per km 2 towards the edges of the patch. The waste itself is at all levels of the ocean, including the ocean floor.

Since the patch is located exactly between two distant landmasses, the waters below the surface patch are also filled with waste, making the problem of cleaning it up much greater. Covering a territory the size of three Frances, or 1. The debris does not make up a massive garbage island as it is floating freely, but in some parts, the garbage is extremely concentrated. Most of the patch is actually composed of microplastic debris, which is less than 5 mm in size, making it largely unnoticeable from the air.

The mass of micro-plastics increased exponentially since studies were first conducted on the patch. The area has been studied since the s, but the urgency to do something about it became apparent in , with studies geared towards deploying actual expeditions. In total, three major expeditions have been deployed to the Great Pacific Patch, starting with the Mega Expedition of , which involved 30 ships and surface nets that returned with over 1.

Upon designing a new multi-level trawl, The Multi-Level Trawl Expedition was carried out later the same year, studying not only the extent of the buoyant plastic composition of the patch, but 11 layers of the water, as well.

In , the Aerial Expedition surveyed the larger plastics in the ocean by flying over an area of km 2 and returning with over 7, snapshots. Humans are the culprits of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, with ships having left behind fishing nets and dumping plastic waste into the ocean. Once the larger, more buoyant plastics get picked up by the ocean gyre, they float far into the waters, heading straight for the patch.

Through the effects of sunlight, waves, and the breakdown by marine life, some disintegrate over time and become micro-plastics. The main staples of the patch are hard plastics, including sheet, film, plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets.

Then, there are pre-production plastics, such as cylinders, spheres and disks, as well as fragments of foamed materials. The three-dimensional garbage patch does not only spread out across the surface of the water but extends downwards to the bottom of the ocean floor.

I would imagine this plastic kind of looks like food. Do we know if fish and birds are eating this stuff? They even eat some larger plastics. So for example, the Laysan Albatross in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, we know that just about every dead albatross found on Midway Atoll has some form of plastic in its stomach.

We don't know if that's what killed it, but we know that this is becoming a big problem. So we know that there are micro plastics in the ocean. We know that birds and fish and even some larger marine mammals eat these plastics. We know there are chemicals in the plastics and we know that the chemicals can absorb other toxic chemicals that are floating around in the ocean.

So now the big question is, what are those plastics doing to the animals that eat them. Especially if most of the trash is contained in 'garbage patch' areas because of the way the debris naturally accumulates because of ocean currents. But they're not areas where you can easily go through and skim trash off the surface.

First of all, because they are tiny micro plastics that aren't easily removable from the ocean. But also just because of the size of this area. We did some quick calculations that if you tried to clean up less than one percent of the North Pacific Ocean it would take 67 ships one year to clean up that portion. And the bottom line is that until we prevent debris from entering the ocean at the source, it's just going to keep congregating in these areas.

We could go out and clean it all up and then still have the same problem on our hands as long as there's debris entering the ocean. So what can you, me, or anyone do to help? It's as simple as changing your individual behavior every day, creating less waste, reusing what you can, remembering to recycle