Garbage Patch in the Atlantic Now Makes Two
As with all the world's oceans, the Atlantic and Pacific contain gyres, or converging currents that create swirling vortexes over vast areas of each body of water. Plastics and other garbage that make their way into lakes, streams, rivers, and eventually the oceans become trapped in the gyres and slowly begin to agglomerate.
In both cases, most of the plastics floating in the gyres are commonly-used commercial plastics used to make grocery and trash bags, Styrofoam, and soft drink and water bottles. Nurdles are also highly prevalent, but are much harder to detect due to their miniscule size.
Nurdles are plastic resin pellets that are manufactured and shipped to be heated and molded into consumer products. Each of these pellets measures less than 5mm in diameter, and they are known to spill out easily during the shipping process and work their way into the oceans and waterways. Nurdles are also commonly referred to as "mermaid tears", as they can easily make their way into the digestive systems of marine life and cause serious injury or death.
This summer, the Sea Education Association (SEA) will be conducting a research expedition in the Atlantic in order to survey garbage patch. SEA has already been conducting research on marine debris in the Atlantic for over twenty years, and the upcoming expedition will provide researchers with concrete evidence of what has actually accumulated over the years.
SEA's Kara Lavender Law, oceanographer and principle investigator leading the expedition, notes that while the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has received much attention by researchers and the press, its Atlantic counterpart has been widely overlooked.
The Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF), which has conducted extensive research on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, confers that little is known about just how much debris is actually floating in the Atlantic.
SEA's expedition has received funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF), as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program. The latter organization has sponsored the work of Captain Charles Moore, founder of AMRF.
Research will be conducted aboard the SSV Corwith Cramer, which is scheduled to set sail in early June and end its voyage in mid July. The route will cover over 3300 nautical miles in the Atlantic off the coast of Bermuda. Once the voyage is underway, SEA will report its findings on a daily basis on its website.
