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Did you know that there's a garbage patch twice the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean? What's more, this trash pool is almost entirely made up of plastic. How bad do you think that is for the marine environment? Well, actually, it's worse than bad—it's catastrophic! We are talking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Presently, this 'patch' represents around 80,000 tons of debris. And get this: according to Conservation International, by 2050 the mass of ocean trash from plastic will outweigh its fish. Now that's certainly reason enough to worry. But how was this vast concentration of trash created in the first place, and what's being done to get rid of it?
Click through and find out more about this destructive collection of floating plastic.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers a surface area of roughly 1.6 million km2. That's nearly twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France!
About 99% of everything in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is plastic. That equates to 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic present in 80,000 tons of garbage. Furthermore, 46% of the total mass is made of discarded fishing gear.
Plastic is not biodegradable, meaning it does not disintegrate. Instead, it breaks down into tiny pieces known as microplastics.
Keeping microplastics company are larger pieces of plastic. According to National Geographic, 80% of plastic in the ocean comes from land activities in North America and Asia.
More specifically, a 2022 study undertaken by Scientific Reports and posted by the National Library of Medicine concluded that 75-86% of the plastic pollution is from fishing and agriculture, with most identified emissions originating from Japan, China, South Korea, the United States, and Taiwan.
The impact of marine debris is well documented. It can prevent algae and plankton, the photosynthetic producers in the marine food web, from receiving enough sunlight to create nutrients. This can threaten the entire food chain.
Debris of this sort can also injure or kill marine and coastal wildlife. Entanglement, ingestion, suffocation, and general debilitation are all associated with plastic pollution.
Turtles, for example, can easily become entangled in discarded fishing nets. Furthermore, they often mistake the gelatinous texture of plastic for a jellyfish, their preferred food.
The hazards of ghost fishing, a phenomenon whereby discarded fishing nets continue to 'catch' marine life, is shown to cause an alarming mortality rate among crustaceans, sea birds, and marine mammals such as seals.
These discarded fishing nets are also harmful to coral reefs, the nylon web breaking corals, exposing them to disease, and even blocking the reefs from vital sunlight.
The term "garbage patch" is a tad misleading, making it sound like this is a large, continuous island of visible trash. In fact, much of the debris lies below the surface and is so microscopic it's invisible to the naked eye.
Even more confusing is the fact that there's more than one patch. Rotating Pacific Ocean currents known as gyres have created three 'islands' of debris: the Western Garbage Patch, Eastern Garbage Patch, and the Subtropical Convergence Zone (a calm, stable area of the ocean fed by two prevailing flows of water that meet and interact, trapping marine debris).
Beyond the Pacific region, additional garbage patches have been identified in areas where gyres are active, bodies of water that include the Indian Ocean and the North and South Atlantic. Worryingly, the Mediterranean and North seas are developing their own garbage patches.
In response to the growing threat posed by the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to the marine ecosystem, a number of initiatives have been launched to combat the accumulation of ocean debris. One of these enterprises is Ocean Voyages Institute (OVI).
Since 2009, OVI has been alerting the world to the dangers of ocean plastic.
In 2020, OVI completed the largest open-ocean cleanup in history—recovering, upcycling, recycling, and repurposing some 170 tons of plastics.
Over the course of 48 days, an overwhelming amount of fishing gear, derelict ghost nets, and consumer plastics were recovered. Tangled in this trash were numerous dead fish and turtle skeletons.
Mary Crowley, founder and executive director of OVI, commented at the time: "We exceeded our goal of capturing tons of toxic consumer plastics and derelict 'ghost' nets, and in these challenging times, we are continuing to help restore the health of our ocean, which influences our own health and the health of the planet. The oceans can't wait for these nets and debris to break down into microplastics which impair the ocean's ability to store carbon and toxify the fragile ocean food web."
Another ambitious project established to rid the oceans of plastic waste is the environmental non-profit Ocean Cleanup. Founded by Boyan Slat in 2013, Ocean Cleanup's mission is to put itself out of business after removing 90% of ocean plastic by 2040.
Boyan leads an organization actively clearing up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by designing and deploying cutting edge pollution busting technology.
In August 2023, Ocean Cleanup debuted their System 03 method of harvesting plastic waste from the seas.
System 03 consists of a floating barrier approximately 1.4 miles (2.2 km) long, which is towed between two slow-moving vessels.
This barrier suspends a screen extending 13 feet (4 m) below the surface of the water, where most floating plastic is encountered. It's akin to dragging a huge lake.
System 03 is nearly three times larger than Ocean Cleanup's previous technology and capable of cleaning an area the size of a football field every five seconds.
System 03 operates on a simple principle—using bigger systems makes cleaning the ocean more economical.
The Ocean Cleanup program has already removed hundreds of thousands of tons of plastic and aims to scale up to have a fleet of similar systems.
Besides its ongoing work in the remote Pacific, Ocean Cleanup has also deployed Interceptors—automated solar-powered devices—in some of the world's most polluted rivers to prevent plastic reaching the ocean in the first place.
Meanwhile, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Program urges everybody to do more to protect the world's oceans and rivers by being more responsible about how they dispose of trash, both on land and in water.
People are asked to reduce the amount of waste they produce, and to reuse items whenever possible. Choose reusable items over disposable ones.
And recycle as much as you can. Bags, bottles and caps, cans, cell phones, ink cartridges, and many other items can be recycled.
Sources: (Conservation International) (National Geographic) (The Ocean Cleanup) (Ocean Voyages Institute) (National Library of Medicine) (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
See also: Human brain samples have a spoonful of nanoplastics, according to major study
The growing garbage island polluting the Pacific Ocean
Where did 80,000 tons of trash come from?
LIFESTYLE Environment
Did you know that there's a garbage patch twice the size of Texas floating in the Pacific Ocean? What's more, this trash pool is almost entirely made up of plastic. How bad do you think that is for the marine environment? Well, actually, it's worse than bad—it's catastrophic! We are talking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Presently, this 'patch' represents around 80,000 tons of debris. And get this: according to Conservation International, by 2050 the mass of ocean trash from plastic will outweigh its fish. Now that's certainly reason enough to worry. But how was this vast concentration of trash created in the first place, and what's being done to get rid of it?
Click through and find out more about this destructive collection of floating plastic.