Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in the ocean, seas, and other large bodies of water.
Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, the garbage patch is actually two distinct collections of debris bounded by the massive North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.
Marine Debris
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch sits near the surface of the ocean. Dense debris can sink centimeters or even several meters beneath the surface, making the vortex’s area nearly impossible to measure.
Microplastics
Most debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is plastic. Plastic is not biodegradable, meaning it does not disintegrate—it simply breaks into tinier and tinier pieces, known as microplastics. Microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup.
Plastic Debris
Mixed in with microplastics are larger pieces of plastic. Most plastics are refuse from land activities in North American and Asia. Some plastics are accidentally dumped from oceangoing vessels. All the plastics on this page were culled from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Marine Debris
Marine debris can prevent algae and plankton, the photosynthetic producers in the marine food web, from receiving enough sunlight to create nutrients. When these tiny organisms are threatened, the entire food web is put at risk—first-order consumers that eat the plankton, such as jellies; second-order consumers that eat the jellies, such as turtles; and apex predators such as sharks.
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Albatross
The marine debris of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can devastate marine life in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The stomach contents of this unfortunate albatross include plastic marine debris fed to the chick by its parents.
Turtle
Turtles, too, are put in danger by marine debris. Turtles can easily be entangled in discarded fishing nets or mistake the gelatinous texture of plastic for a jelly, their favorite food.
Seal
Perhaps one of the starkest impacts on marine life is the phenomenon of “ghost fishing.” Most large debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up of inexpensive fishing nets. Ghost fishing happens when these discarded nets continue to “catch” marine life—suffocating marine mammals such as this endangered Hawaiian monk seal.
Garbage Patches
Garbage patches are found in the calm, stable centers of many of the world’s ocean gyres. Even smaller bodies of water, such as the Mediterranean and North Seas, are developing their own garbage patches along heavily trafficked shipping lanes.
What We Know about Garbage Patches
Download this poster to understand ‘What We Know about Garbage Patches.’ The best way to reduce debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is to reduce, recycle, reuse—and clean up local beaches.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawaii and California.
These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawaii. This convergence zone is where warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another.
The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines a gyre as a large system of swirling ocean currents. Increasingly, however, it also refers to the garbage patch as a vortex of plastic waste and debris broken down into small particles in the ocean. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is formed by four currents rotating clockwise around an area of 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles): the California current, the North Equatorial current, the Kuroshio current, and the North Pacific current.
The area in the center of a gyre tends to be very calm and stable. The circular motion of the gyre draws debris into this stable center, where it becomes trapped. A plastic water bottle discarded off the coast of California, for instance, takes the California Current south toward Mexico. There, it may catch the North Equatorial Current, which crosses the vast Pacific. Near the coast of Japan, the bottle may travel north on the powerful Kuroshio Current. Finally, the bottle travels eastward on the North Pacific Current. The gently rolling vortexes of the Eastern and Western Garbage Patches gradually draw in the bottle.
The amount of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates because much of it is not biodegradable. Many plastics, for instance, do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.
For many people, the idea of a “garbage patch” conjures up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics can’t always be seen by the naked eye. Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. This soup is intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes.
The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers and ecologists recently discovered that about 70% of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
While oceanographers and climatologists predicted the existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it was a racing boat captain by the name of Charles Moore who actually discovered the trash vortex. Moore was sailing from Hawaii to California after competing in a yachting race. Crossing the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Moore and his crew noticed millions of pieces of plastic surrounding his ship.
Marine Debris
No one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is too large for scientists to trawl. In addition, not all of the trash floats on the surface. Denser debris can sink centimeters or even several meters beneath the surface, making the vortex’s area nearly impossible to measure.
80 percent of the plastic in the ocean is estimated to come from land-based sources, with the remaining 20 percent coming from boats and other marine sources. These percentages vary by region, however. A 2018 study found that synthetic fishing nets made up nearly half the mass of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, due largely to ocean current dynamics and increased fishing activity in the Pacific Ocean.
While many different types of trash enter the ocean, plastics make up the majority of marine debris for two reasons. First, plastic’s durability, low cost, and malleability mean that it’s being used in more and more consumer and industrial products. Second, plastic goods do not biodegrade but instead, break down into smaller pieces.
In the ocean, the sun breaks down these plastics into tinier and tinier pieces, a process known as photodegradation. Most of this debris comes from plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and Styrofoam cups.
Marine debris can be very harmful to marine life in the gyre. For instance, loggerhead sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellies, their favorite food. Albatrosses mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks, which die of starvation or ruptured organs.
Seals and other marine mammals are especially at risk. They can get entangled in abandoned plastic fishing nets, which are being discarded largely due to inclement weather and illegal fishing. Seals and other mammals often drown in these forgotten nets—a phenomenon known as “ghost fishing.”
Marine debris can also disturb marine food webs in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. As microplastics and other trash collect on or near the surface of the ocean, they block sunlight from reaching plankton and algae below. Algae and plankton are the most common autotrophs, or producers, in the marine food web. Autotrophs are organisms that can produce their own nutrients from carbon and sunlight.
If algae and plankton communities are threatened, the entire food web may change. Animals that feed on algae and plankton, such as fish and turtles, will have less food. If populations of those animals decrease, there will be less food for apex predators such as tuna, sharks, and whales. Eventually, seafood becomes less available and more expensive for people.
These dangers are compounded by the fact that plastics both leach out and absorb harmful pollutants. As plastics break down through photodegradation, they leach out colorants and chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), that have been linked to environmental and health problems. Conversely, plastics can also absorb pollutants, such as PCBs, from the seawater. These chemicals can then enter the food chain when consumed by marine life.
Patching Up the Patch
Because the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is so far from any country’s coastline, no nation will take responsibility or provide the funding to clean it up. Charles Moore, the man who discovered the vortex, says cleaning up the garbage patch would “bankrupt any country” that tried it.
Many individuals and international organizations, however, are dedicated to preventing the patch from growing.
Cleaning up marine debris is not as easy as it sounds. Many microplastics are the same size as small sea animals, so nets designed to scoop up trash would catch these creatures as well. Even if we could design nets that would just catch garbage, the size of the oceans makes this job far too time-consuming to consider. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program has estimated that it would take 67 ships one year to clean up less than one percent of the North Pacific Ocean.
Many expeditions have traveled through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Charles Moore, who discovered the patch in 1997, continues to raise awareness through his own environmental organization, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. During a 2014 expedition, Moore and his team used aerial drones, to assess from above the extent of the trash below. The drones determined that there is 100 times more plastic by weight than previously measured. The team also discovered more permanent plastic features, or islands, some over 15 meters (50 feet) in length.
All the floating plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch inspired National Geographic Emerging Explorer David de Rothschild and his team at Adventure Ecology to create a large catamaran made of plastic bottles: the Plastiki. The sturdiness of the Plastiki displayed the strength and durability of plastics, the creative ways that they can be repurposed, and the threat they pose to the environment when they don’t decompose. In 2010, the crew successfully navigated the Plastiki from San Francisco, California, to Sydney, Australia.
Scientists and explorers agree that limiting or eliminating our use of disposable plastics and increasing our use of biodegradable resources will be the best way to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Organizations such as the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the Plastic Oceans Foundation are using social media and direct action campaigns to support individuals, manufacturers, and businesses in their transition from toxic, disposable plastics to biodegradable or reusable materials.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a soupy collection of marine debris—mostly plastics.
Photograph by Ray Boland, NOAA. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Worldwide Garbage Patches
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not the only marine trash vortex—it’s just the biggest. The Atlantic and Indian Oceans both have trash vortexes. Even shipping routes in smaller bodies of water, such as the North Sea, are developing garbage patches.
Quotable Captain
“So on the way back to our home port in Long Beach, California, we decided to take a shortcut through the gyre, which few seafarers ever cross. Fishermen shun it because its waters lack the nutrients to support an abundant catch. Sailors dodge it because it lacks the wind to propel their sailboats.
“Yet as I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic.
“It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments. Months later, after I discussed what I had seen with the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, perhaps the world’s leading expert on flotsam, he began referring to the area as the ‘eastern garbage patch.'”
Capt. Charles Moore, discoverer of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, in an article for Natural History magazine in 2003
Strange Cargo
When ships are caught in storms, they often lose cargo to the oceans. The following are just a few of the strange items that have washed up on shores:
- In 1990, five shipping containers of Nike sneakers and work boots were lost to the Pacific in a storm. People in Washington and Oregon snatched up the shoes on shore, holding swap meets to find matched pairs to wear or sell.
- In 1992, rubber duckies floated in the Pacific when a ship lost tens of thousands of bathtub toys. The ducks were accompanied by turtles, beavers, and frogs.
- In 1994, a ship lost 34,000 pieces of hockey gear, including gloves, chest protectors, and shin guards.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a huge area of marine debris. Marine debris is garbage in the ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the world’s biggest area of marine debris. It is in the North Pacific Ocean.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches from the West Coast of North America to Japan. It is made up of two parts. One is the Western Garbage Patch, near Japan. The other is the Eastern Garbage Patch, between Hawaii and California.
Strong ocean currents carry marine debris into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Once there, the trash builds up over time. Plastics are the biggest problem. They do not wear down completely. They only break into smaller and smaller pieces.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is mostly of tiny bits of plastic. These small pieces are called microplastics. They cannot always be seen. Often, they just make the water look like a cloudy soup. Larger things, like fishing nets or shoes, are mixed into this soup.
It doesn’t get any better beneath the surface of the water. The seafloor under the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an underwater garbage heap. Over time, most marine debris sinks to the bottom.
Marine Debris Litters The Ocean
A lot of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from fishing boats. Some also come from distant cities and towns.
Plastics are the most common kind of marine debris. Most of this debris comes from plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and Styrofoam cups. The sun breaks these plastics into smaller and smaller pieces. Even if they can’t be seen, they are still there.
Marine debris can be very harmful to marine life. For example, turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellies, their favorite food. Albatrosses mistake plastic pellets for fish eggs. They then feed the pellets to their chicks. Often, the chicks die.
Seals are also in danger. They can get tangled in plastic fishing nets. Seals often drown in these nets.
Marine debris is affecting the entire food chain. For example, algae are underwater plants. Plankton is tiny critters that eat algae to survive. Plankton get eaten by other animals, like whales. But microplastics stop sunlight from reaching underwater algae. Without sunlight, the algae won’t grow and spread. Without algae, plankton won’t have enough food. And without plankton, whales won’t have any food either.
Plastics also contain harmful pollutants. These dangerous chemicals are poisoning the water. They are also making fish and marine mammals, such as whales and seals, very sick.
What To Do About The Patch
Cleaning up marine debris is not easy. Many microplastics are the same size as small sea animals. Nets that can scoop up garbage would catch these animals too. In any case, the ocean is just too big to clean. Scientists say it would take one year for 67 ships to clean up just a tiny part of the North Pacific Ocean. They say the best answer is to stop throwing away so much plastic.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a soupy collection of marine debris—mostly plastics.
Photograph by Ray Boland, NOAA. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and bays.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not the only marine trash patch, but it is the biggest. It spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually made up of two parts: the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between Hawaii and California.
The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. A gyre is a large system of swirling ocean currents. The area in the center of a gyre tends to be very calm and stable. The circular motion of the gyre draws debris into this stable center, where it becomes trapped.
A plastic water bottle discarded off the coast of California, for instance, takes the California Current, south toward Mexico. There, it may catch the North Equatorial Current, which crosses the vast Pacific. Near the coast of Japan, the bottle may travel north on the powerful Kuroshio Current. Finally, the bottle travels eastward on the North Pacific Current. The gently rolling vortexes of the Eastern and Western Garbage Patches slowly draw in the bottle.
The amount of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates because much of it is not biodegradable. Many plastics, for instance, do not wear down. They simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.
For many people, the idea of a garbage patch summons up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In fact, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. The debris cannot always be seen by the naked eye. It can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. Larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes, are mixed into this soup.
The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. About 70 percent of marine debris eventually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
Marine Debris Clutters Ocean
Most plastic in the ocean comes from land-based sources, but some of it comes from marine sources. A lot of plastic from boats has accumulated in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. A 2018 study found that fishing nets alone made up nearly half its mass.
While many different types of trash enter the ocean, plastics make up the majority of marine debris for two reasons. First, plastic’s durability and low cost mean that it’s being used in more and more consumer and industrial products. Second, plastic goods do not biodegrade but instead, break down into smaller pieces.
In the ocean, the sun breaks down these plastics into tinier and tinier pieces. Most of this debris comes from plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and Styrofoam cups.
Marine debris can be very harmful to marine life in the gyre. For instance, loggerhead sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellies, their favorite food. Albatrosses can mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs. They then feed the pellets to their chicks, which die of starvation or ruptured organs.
Seals and other marine mammals are especially at risk. They can get entangled in abandoned plastic fishing nets. Seals and other mammals often drown in these forgotten nets.
Marine debris can also disturb marine food webs in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. As microplastics and other trash collect on or near the surface of the ocean, they block sunlight from reaching plankton and algae below. If these marine plants are threatened, the entire food web may change. Animals that feed on algae and plankton, such as fish and turtles, will have less food. If their populations decrease, there will be less food for the animals that feed on them, such as tuna, sharks, and whales.
These dangers are worsened by the fact that plastics both release and absorb harmful pollutants. As plastics break down, they release chemicals that have been linked to environmental and health problems. Plastics can also absorb pollutants from the seawater. These chemicals can then enter the food chain when consumed by marine life.
Cleaning Up The Patch
Because the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is so far from any country’s coastline, no nation will take responsibility for cleaning it up. However, many international organizations are dedicated to preventing the patch from growing.
Cleaning up marine debris is not as easy as it sounds. Many microplastics are the same size as small sea animals, so nets designed to scoop up trash would catch these creatures as well. Even if we could design nets that would just catch garbage, the size of the oceans makes this job far too time-consuming to consider. Scientists estimate that it would take 67 ships one year to clean up less than one percent of the North Pacific Ocean.
Scientists agree there is a better way to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch: The countries of the world must limit or end their use of disposable plastics.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawaii and California.
These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawaii. This convergence zone is where warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another.
The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines a gyre as a large system of swirling ocean currents. Increasingly, however, it also refers to the garbage patch / a vortex of plastic waste and debris broken down into small particles in the ocean. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is formed by four currents rotating clockwise around an area of 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles): the California current, the North Equatorial current, the Kuroshio Current, and the North Pacific current.
The area in the center of a gyre tends to be very calm and stable. The circular motion of the gyre draws debris into this stable center, where it becomes trapped. A plastic water bottle discarded off the coast of California, for instance, takes the California Current south toward Mexico. There, it may catch the North Equatorial Current, which crosses the vast Pacific. Near the coast of Japan, the bottle may travel north on the powerful Kuroshio Current. Finally, the bottle travels eastward on the North Pacific Current. The gently rolling vortexes of the Eastern and Western Garbage Patches gradually draw in the bottle.
The amount of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates because much of it is not biodegradable. Many plastics, for instance, do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.
For many people, the idea of a garbage patch conjures up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics cannot always be seen by the naked eye. Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. This soup is intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes.
The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers and ecologists recently discovered that about 70 percent of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
While oceanographers and climatologists predicted the existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it was a racing boat captain by the name of Charles Moore who actually discovered the trash vortex. Moore was sailing from Hawaii to California after competing in a yachting race. Crossing the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Moore and his crew noticed millions of pieces of plastic surrounding his ship.
Marine Debris?
No one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is too large for scientists to trawl. In addition, not all of the trash floats on the surface. Denser debris can sink centimeters or even several meters beneath the surface, making the vortex’s area nearly impossible to measure.
80 percent of the plastic in the ocean is estimated to come from land-based sources, with the rest coming from boats and other marine sources. These percentages vary by region, however. A 2018 study found that synthetic fishing nets made up nearly half the mass of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Ocean currents and increased fishing activity are two main causes of this marine plastic buildup.
While many different types of trash enter the ocean, plastics make up the majority of marine debris for two reasons. First, plastic’s durability, low cost, and malleability mean that it’s being used in more and more consumer and industrial products. Second, plastic goods do not biodegrade but instead, break down into smaller pieces.
In the ocean, the sun breaks down these plastics into tinier and tinier pieces, a process known as photodegradation. Most of this debris comes from plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and Styrofoam cups.
Marine debris can be very harmful to marine life in the gyre. For instance, loggerhead sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellies, their favorite food. Albatrosses mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks, which die of starvation or ruptured organs.
Seals and other marine mammals are especially at risk. They can get entangled in abandoned plastic fishing nets, which are being discarded largely due to inclement weather and illegal fishing. Seals and other mammals often drown in these forgotten nets — a phenomenon known as “ghost fishing.”
Marine debris can also disturb marine food webs in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. As microplastics and other trash collect on or near the surface of the ocean, they block sunlight from reaching plankton and algae below. Algae and plankton are the most common autotrophs, or producers, in the marine food web. Autotrophs are organisms that can produce their own nutrients from carbon and sunlight.
If algae and plankton communities are threatened, the entire food web may change. Animals that feed on algae and plankton, such as fish and turtles, will have less food. If populations of those animals decrease, there will be less food for apex predators such as tuna, sharks, and whales. Eventually, seafood becomes less available and more expensive for people.
These dangers are compounded by the fact that plastics both leach out and absorb harmful pollutants. As plastics break down through photodegradation, they leach out colorants and chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), that have been linked to environmental and health problems. Conversely, plastics can also absorb pollutants, such as PCBs, from the seawater. These chemicals can then enter the food chain when consumed by marine life.
Patching Up the Patch
Because the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is so far from any country’s coastline, no nation will take responsibility or provide the funding to clean it up. Charles Moore, the man who discovered the vortex, says cleaning up the garbage patch would “bankrupt any country” that tried it.
Many individuals and international organizations, however, are dedicated to preventing the patch from growing.
Cleaning up marine debris is not as easy as it sounds. Many microplastics are the same size as small sea animals, so nets designed to scoop up trash would catch these creatures as well. Even if we could design nets that would just catch garbage, the size of the oceans makes this job far too time-consuming to consider. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program has estimated that it would take 67 ships one year to clean up less than one percent of the North Pacific Ocean.
Many expeditions have traveled through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Charles Moore, who discovered the patch in 1997, continues to raise awareness through his own environmental organization, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. During a 2014 expedition, Moore and his team used aerial drones, to assess from above the extent of the trash below. The drones determined that there is 100 times more plastic by weight than previously measured. The team also discovered more permanent plastic features, or islands, some over 15 meters (50 feet) in length.
All the floating plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch inspired National Geographic Emerging Explorer David de Rothschild and his team at Adventure Ecology to create a large catamaran made of plastic bottles: the Plastiki. The sturdiness of the Plastiki displayed the strength and durability of plastics, the creative ways that they can be repurposed, and the threat they pose to the environment when they don’t decompose. In 2010, the crew successfully navigated the Plastiki from San Francisco, California, to Sydney, Australia.
Scientists and explorers agree that limiting or eliminating our use of disposable plastics and increasing our use of biodegradable resources will be the best way to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Organizations such as the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the Plastic Oceans Foundation are using social media and direct action campaigns to support individuals, manufacturers, and businesses in their transition from toxic, disposable plastics to biodegradable or reusable materials.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawaii and California.
These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawaii. This convergence zone is where warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another.
The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines a gyre as a large system of swirling ocean currents. Increasingly, however, it also refers to the garbage patch / a vortex of plastic waste and debris broken down into small particles in the ocean. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is formed by four currents rotating clockwise around an area of 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles): the California current, the North Equatorial current, the Kuroshio Current, and the North Pacific current.
The area in the center of a gyre tends to be very calm and stable. The circular motion of the gyre draws debris into this stable center, where it becomes trapped. A plastic water bottle discarded off the coast of California, for instance, takes the California Current south toward Mexico. There, it may catch the North Equatorial Current, which crosses the vast Pacific. Near the coast of Japan, the bottle may travel north on the powerful Kuroshio Current. Finally, the bottle travels eastward on the North Pacific Current. The gently rolling vortexes of the Eastern and Western Garbage Patches gradually draw in the bottle.
The amount of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates because much of it is not biodegradable. Many plastics, for instance, do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.
For many people, the idea of a garbage patch conjures up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics cannot always be seen by the naked eye. Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. This soup is intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes.
The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers and ecologists recently discovered that about 70 percent of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
While oceanographers and climatologists predicted the existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it was a racing boat captain by the name of Charles Moore who actually discovered the trash vortex. Moore was sailing from Hawaii to California after competing in a yachting race. Crossing the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Moore and his crew noticed millions of pieces of plastic surrounding his ship.
Marine Debris?
No one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is too large for scientists to trawl. In addition, not all of the trash floats on the surface. Denser debris can sink centimeters or even several meters beneath the surface, making the vortex’s area nearly impossible to measure.
80 percent of the plastic in the ocean is estimated to come from land-based sources, with the rest coming from boats and other marine sources. These percentages vary by region, however. A 2018 study found that synthetic fishing nets made up nearly half the mass of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Ocean currents and increased fishing activity are two main causes of this marine plastic buildup.
While many different types of trash enter the ocean, plastics make up the majority of marine debris for two reasons. First, plastic’s durability, low cost, and malleability mean that it’s being used in more and more consumer and industrial products. Second, plastic goods do not biodegrade but instead, break down into smaller pieces.
In the ocean, the sun breaks down these plastics into tinier and tinier pieces, a process known as photodegradation. Most of this debris comes from plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and Styrofoam cups.
Marine debris can be very harmful to marine life in the gyre. For instance, loggerhead sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellies, their favorite food. Albatrosses mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks, which die of starvation or ruptured organs.
Seals and other marine mammals are especially at risk. They can get entangled in abandoned plastic fishing nets, which are being discarded largely due to inclement weather and illegal fishing. Seals and other mammals often drown in these forgotten nets — a phenomenon known as “ghost fishing.”
Marine debris can also disturb marine food webs in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. As microplastics and other trash collect on or near the surface of the ocean, they block sunlight from reaching plankton and algae below. Algae and plankton are the most common autotrophs, or producers, in the marine food web. Autotrophs are organisms that can produce their own nutrients from carbon and sunlight.
If algae and plankton communities are threatened, the entire food web may change. Animals that feed on algae and plankton, such as fish and turtles, will have less food. If populations of those animals decrease, there will be less food for apex predators such as tuna, sharks, and whales. Eventually, seafood becomes less available and more expensive for people.
These dangers are compounded by the fact that plastics both leach out and absorb harmful pollutants. As plastics break down through photodegradation, they leach out colorants and chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), that have been linked to environmental and health problems. Conversely, plastics can also absorb pollutants, such as PCBs, from the seawater. These chemicals can then enter the food chain when consumed by marine life.
Patching Up the Patch
Because the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is so far from any country’s coastline, no nation will take responsibility or provide the funding to clean it up. Charles Moore, the man who discovered the vortex, says cleaning up the garbage patch would “bankrupt any country” that tried it.
Many individuals and international organizations, however, are dedicated to preventing the patch from growing.
Cleaning up marine debris is not as easy as it sounds. Many microplastics are the same size as small sea animals, so nets designed to scoop up trash would catch these creatures as well. Even if we could design nets that would just catch garbage, the size of the oceans makes this job far too time-consuming to consider. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s Marine Debris Program has estimated that it would take 67 ships one year to clean up less than one percent of the North Pacific Ocean.
Many expeditions have traveled through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Charles Moore, who discovered the patch in 1997, continues to raise awareness through his own environmental organization, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. During a 2014 expedition, Moore and his team used aerial drones, to assess from above the extent of the trash below. The drones determined that there is 100 times more plastic by weight than previously measured. The team also discovered more permanent plastic features, or islands, some over 15 meters (50 feet) in length.
All the floating plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch inspired National Geographic Emerging Explorer David de Rothschild and his team at Adventure Ecology to create a large catamaran made of plastic bottles: the Plastiki. The sturdiness of the Plastiki displayed the strength and durability of plastics, the creative ways that they can be repurposed, and the threat they pose to the environment when they don’t decompose. In 2010, the crew successfully navigated the Plastiki from San Francisco, California, to Sydney, Australia.
Scientists and explorers agree that limiting or eliminating our use of disposable plastics and increasing our use of biodegradable resources will be the best way to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Organizations such as the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the Plastic Oceans Foundation are using social media and direct action campaigns to support individuals, manufacturers, and businesses in their transition from toxic, disposable plastics to biodegradable or reusable materials.
The article was originally published here.
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