The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Some of you might be familiar with this. I have never even heard of it until one of my professors started talking about current events regarding the ocean.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is located halfway between California and Hawaii. Its waters contain the most offshore plastic in the world. It is roughly three times the size of France. Could you imagine this accumulation of trash in the ocean that is three times the size of a country? 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean each year. How does all this trash get into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Currents transport the pollution to the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, where the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is. A gyre is a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. Once the plastic enters the gyre, it is highly unlikely for the plastics to leave the area once they enter the gyre. It is difficult and takes a significant amount of time for these plastics to degrade. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch will only increase as we discard more plastic into the environment.
A majority of the GPGP consists of plastic. Another portion of the GPGP consists of fishing nets. As the Mother Nature Network reported, “the rest comes largely from recreational boaters, offshore oil rigs and large cargo ships, which drop about 10,000 steel shipping containers into the sea each year, full of things like hockey gloves, computer monitors, resin pellets and LEGOs.” It is terrible and selfish for us humans to be just dumping trash into the ocean, the home to many marine life.
The pollution in the GPGP is dangerous to ocean life in many ways. The impact it has on wildlife is severe. Animals might confuse the pollution as food; their life and existence are at risk. Marine life who live in the area or travel by are more than likely to accidentally consume the pollution. The Ocean Cleanup reported that “sea turtles by-caught in fisheries operating within and around the patch can have up to 74% (by dry weight) of their diets composed of ocean plastics.” When marine animals consume the pollution, they are consume the chemicals that have been found in the pollution. Another thing that results from the GPGP is entanglement. Many fishermen use plastic nets, especially those in developing countries because they are cheap and durable. They are often known as ghost nets because they are hard to see in the dim light. Unfortunately, these nets often are abandoned and end up in the GPGP where some poor animal could get tangled into. Sea turtles are especially vulnerable to this. From plastic straws to plastic nets, the turtles just can’t seem to get a break. It is just horrible what is happening to these poor animals.
Not only does the GPGP impact marine life, but it also affects us humans too. The harmful plastics and chemicals that marine life ingest can contaminate the human food chain. The chemicals that marine life ingest can pass onto the predator that eats it (for all you seafood lovers out there). Our economy is also affected. The United Nations reported that “the approximate environmental damage caused by plastic to marine ecosystems represents 13 billion USD.”
The problem with trying to cleanup the GPGB is the financial costs associated with it. Oceanographer Charles Moore said that a cleanup effort “would bankrupt any country and kill wildlife in the nets as it went.”
Currently, there are some solutions in process of being developed. A project is being led by a 25 year old from Netherland called Boyan Slat who is passionate about finding a way to clean up the ocean. He founded the nonprofit the Ocean Cleanup and came up with idea of a giant, floating trash collector. The device consists of a pipe, 4 feet in diameter and 1,969 feet in length. As National Geographic explains, “it will be placed on the surface of the water in the shape of a U with a screen skirt that hangs below the surface. It moves slowly through the water, driven by currents and winds, and can capture plastics on the surface, as well as debris almost 10 feet below the surface. If the device performs as designed, 60 additional booms will be deployed.” There is a concern of durability against the elements. While Slat’s idea has been met with criticism, it is a step in the right direction, whether people focus on the prevention or the cleanup.
It is important for us to be aware of such issues so we can be proactive in preventing it and finding solutions. We need to be educated in such issues with the environment. We need to know the consequences with pollution and how difficult it is for pollution to decompose. We need to recycle more, so that less pollution end up in our oceans. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not the only garbage patch that exists; there are many garbage patches like the GPGP. They may be smaller, but they still pose the same risks.
I heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch when it was just the size of Texas, and I cannot believe that it has grown to three times the size of France in such a short amount of time. Now that we know what happens to our trash, I really don’t understand why we keep dumping so much garbage into the ocean. 10,000 steel shipping containers of trash per year? Wow. I’m very glad to see that someone, especially someone so young, is doing something to try to address this, and I completely agree that, going forward, we must be even more proactive on this issue.
We need to all work together to eliminate this disaster along with sustaining what’s done. I’d do my part in funding to have disaster cleaned up.