In my last post, I talked about where our trash is supposed to go but, that is not always where it ends up. Much of the waste that does not end up in the normal destinations end up in the ocean. The main culprit is plastic. Plastic is known to take about 450 years to decompose and even then it does not disintegrate. Plastic simply breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces known as microplastics. Over time microplastics along with larger pieces of plastic have begun to accumulate in the ocean. A good example of this accumulation can be seen in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Many people picture a huge island made of trash but in reality, it just looks like cloudy water. Although the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not an island there is an island in the Maldives that is completely man-made from trash. But, many of the garbage patches that exist look like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only one of many areas in the ocean that are highly concentrated with plastic.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, which is near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, which is in-between California and Hawaii. The entire garbage patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. 
A Gyre, as defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), is a “large system of rotating ocean currents”. The gyre causes marine debris to get captured in the currents, which move the marine debris to the center where it gets trapped. It gets trapped in the center because the center of the currents is relatively calm compared to the currents, which are in constant motion. Marine debris, as defined by National Geographic, “is litter that ends up in the ocean, seas, and other large bodies of water”.
There is more and more marine debris being found in the ocean every day. The only way to improve this problem is to first know the extent of it and secondly to come up with ways to reduce the amount of single-use plastics. One group of researchers have done just that. A group of research scientists from the University of Hawaii has teamed up with The Swim Expedition and The Ocean Voyages Institute to tag and track waste that they find in the Pacific Ocean. They are trying to track the debris back to its origin and track where the debris is going once it is in the ocean currents. They are doing this to improve models of how trash travels in the ocean and where cleanup efforts should be focused. More on what they are doing can be found in this video.
It makes me so sad to learn about the amount of trash produced and how some of it ends up in the ocean. I truly never realized the amount of trash produced until I started working in a restaurant. I was a servers assistant so I basically just cleaned up all of the tables and the amount of trash and waste people produce is insane. It is good to learn that people are starting to be able to track the amount of waste found in the Pacific Ocean so hopefully we can reduce this pollution in the future.
I’ve read about the garbage patch before, and I think you did a good job explaining it. The photos/diagrams were helpful in understanding how exactly all the trash gets pushed into one spot. Is the patch being actively removed, and if so how are they doing it? I also didn’t know that they were working on tracing where the garbage came from.
It is quite sad that the issue of plastic and plastic management has not been dealt with, or at least dealt with at the level of seriousness it should. I remember hearing about this garbage patch in one of my high school biology classes and was never brought up again. I appreciated my teacher for brining it up, since generation z is the leader of the upcoming years of life on Earth. Hopefully, by the time generation z goes onto have kids, more is done about this garbage patch, or even the issue of plastic at large. Great job at creating the post to make people more informed of issues they do not necessarily hear much about.
Just like industrialization, deforestation, and acts as simple as littering, this mass accumulation of waste is just another testament to how human influence has wrecked havoc upon this earth. We are the earth’s biggest enemy. Last semester I made a speech on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch; it was called A Helping Hand Or A Human Hand. Just as you mentioned, coming up with methods to minimize the amount of plastic in the ocean is of the essence. This post is really is very informational.
I think the fact that this garbage patch even exists should be a major wake up call to society and the scientific community in general, however it is shocking to know that there are tons of people around the world who have no idea that it exists or the effect that it has on the environment. This is likely going to be one of the major environmental issues that our generation will have to face over the course of our lifetimes, and although it certainly going to be a monumental task to eliminate it entirely, dedicating the proper resources to it makes it a possibility if the cultural focus shifts toward the environment.
I did one of the projects last semester on ocean pollution, so I’m pretty familiar with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other giant floating garbage patches in the ocean. I find it extremely sad and disappointing that even with a such a large physical reminder of pollution and human’s damaging affects on the environment, society is not making any pushes to fight against the global issue. I sincerely hope that our generation makes a better push to control pollution and protect the environment than the current one.