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Tuesday, Feb 07th

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Wednesday, 04 February 2009 22:34

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Written by Alex Nicoll

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It is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch—a colossal, swirling mass of plastic and other marine debris located in the northern Pacific Ocean. The debris has been sucked into the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, and is estimated to be anywhere from twice the size of the state of Texas to as large as Canada.

The worlds’ oceans contain a series of converging currents called gyres. These currents create natural swirling vortexes that play a vital role in keeping global temperatures in check. Gyres move in a clockwise pattern, allowing heat to be transferred towards the earth’s poles, while simultaneously cooling tropical regions as cold air is sucked towards the equator.

Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF), studies the impact of plastics on the world’s oceans. Moore believes the majority of the North Pacific Gyre, an area roughly twice the size of the United States, to be laden with plastics and other debris. The sheer size of the Garbage Patch should make it an easy target for aerial and satellite photography, but an actual photo has proven hard to find. AMRF has described the Garbage Patch as “a plastic soup…[that] is distributed throughout the water column as well as in the sediment on the sea floor,” making it virtually unperceivable from the air.¹

According to Moore’s research, the majority of the plastics found in samples extracted from the Garbage Patch are commonly-used commercial plastics such as low-density polyethylene, used to make grocery and trash bags; extended styrene, or Styrofoam; and polyethylene terephthalate, used to make soft drink and water bottles. On a much smaller scale, nurdles have also been detected in seawater samples. 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.

The overwhelming quantity of plastic concentrated in the North Pacific Gyre is taking a heavy toll on marine wildlife. Nurdles, or “mermaid tears”, can easily make their way into the digestive systems of sea creatures. Larger pieces of plastic debris have lead to choking and intestinal blockage. Many plastics are also known to release toxic substances that leech into seawater, causing contaminates to make their way up the food chain.

What about a large-scale gyre clean-up effort? AMRF says cleaning up the Garbage Patch would be like trying “to gather confetti from along a stretch of beach. Now imagine that the area you are trying to clean is not only miles long but also miles deep. Remember that plastic debris occurs throughout the water column. Some of it floats, some of it has sunk to the sea floor, and some swirls below the surface. More trash is constantly being added.”²

The solution? Although the task of cleaning up the Garbage Patch seems virtually impossible, Charles Moore believes the answer to the problem growing any larger is prevention. “All we can do is stop polluting and give the ocean time to spit it out. She can eventually get rid of this junk if we give her a chance.”³

^1,2North Pacific Gyre and Plastic Pollution Questions & Answers— http://www.algalita.org/AlgalitaFAQs.htm

³ Interview with Captain Charles Moore—Sea Studios Foundation, Algalita Marine Research Foundation