What is the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch?
It is a swirling sea of plastic bags, bottles and other debris is growing in the North Pacific, and now another one has been found in the Atlantic. Not all garbage ends up at the dump, a river, sewer or beach can't catch everything the rain washes away, either. In fact, Earth's largest landfill isn't on land at all.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches for hundreds of miles across the North Ocean; it is forming a nebulous, floating junk yard on the high seas; this plastic that begins in the hands of the human and ends up in the ocean often inside the animals stomachs or around their poor little necks. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been described as the “Trash Island.” But according to the director of the NOAA, Holly Bamford, that is a misconception. She stated that if that was the case than it would be easy they could just scoop up an island, but unfortunately that is not the case. Instead, it is more like a galaxy of garbage, and this galaxy of garbage is populated by billions of smaller trash islands that are hidden underwater or spread out over many miles. But to be exact it is still unknown as to how big this garbage patch is.
While there's still much we don't understand about the garbage patch, we do know that most of its made of plastic, and that's where the problems begin. Unlike most of the other trash, plastic isn’t biodegradable, meaning the microbes that break down the substances does not recognize the plastic as food so it leaves it to float there forever. The sunlight however does make the plastic smaller and smaller in time, but this actually makes the matter worse. The plastic never goes away but it becomes microscopic and may be eaten by the tiny marine organism, entering the food chain.
Earth has five or six major oceanic gyres a huge spirals of seawater formed by colliding currents but, one of the largest is the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, filling most of the space between Japan and California. The upper part of this gyre, a few hundred miles north of Hawaii, is where warm water from the South Pacific crashes into cooler water from the north. Known as the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, this is also where the trash collects.
It may take several years for debris to reach this area, depending where it's coming from. Plastic can be washed from the interiors of continents to the sea via sewers, streams and rivers, or it might simply wash away from the coast. Either way, it can be a six- or seven-year journey before it's spinning around in the garbage patch. On the other hand, fishing nets and steel containers are often dropped right in with the rest of the trash.
Moreover, recycling needs to increase, we need to learn how to reuse what we buy. And educate the third world countries on the importance of this travesty.
Thank you for this very interesting article.
ReplyDeleteGreat Post! I'll share it on my social networks.
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