What if I told you that there was a gigantic patch of plastic just sitting in middle of the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between California and Hawaii.  Even worse, what if I told you that this region is 1.6 million square kilometers large, making it twice the size of Texas and three times the size of France.

At this point, I’m sure many of you are asking, “How is it even possible for plastic to contaminate such a large region?”  Unfortunately, much of this is due to humans.  According to The Ocean Cleanup, it is estimated that between 1.15 and 2.41 million tons of plastic enter the ocean from rivers each year.  From there, most of these plastics float along currents and end up in one of five offshore accumulation zones, the largest of which being the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or GPGP for short.

Fig. 1. Remarkably. Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

As mentioned, plastic accumulates in the GPGP by traveling along currents, namely the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.  In this region lies the millions of pounds of plastic and other trash that makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  Luckily, this slow-moving, counterclockwise system of currents is pretty barren as far as oceans go, hosting only phytoplankton, some small fish, and minimal breezes.  For this reason, most fisherman and sailors avoid this patch as well, leaving the plastic to accumulate with reckless abandon.

I realize that I still haven’t established why the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is such a big problem.  After all, it’s just a bunch of plastic sitting out in a relatively uninhabited portion of the ocean, it’s not like you’re going to accidentally stumble upon it one day.

As much as I wish that the GPGP was insignificant, unfortunately it isn’t.  Plastic is notorious for being unable to biodegrade, which means it doesn’t naturally break down into smaller pieces.  However, plastic does photodegrade, meaning that constant exposure to sunlight can break it down into miniscule fragments.  Once larger debris breaks down into these microplastics, it becomes incredibly hard to remove them from the water, and marine animals often mistake them for food.  Additionally, 84% of this plastic was found to contain at least one Persistent Bio-accumulative Toxic, or PBT, chemical.  Therefore, when animals mistakenly eat plastic, they also consume the harmful toxins that come along with it.

Two species, the sea turtle and the albatross, have had particular trouble differentiating between food and garbage.  In fact, sea turtles captured in or near the GPGP had a diet that consisted of up to 74% plastic, not to even mention the thousands that die from fishing nets every year.  Meanwhile, albatrosses have possibly had even more trouble with ocean trash.  Each year on Midway Island, which is near the garbage patch, albatrosses give birth to 500,000 chicks.  Unfortunately, as many as 200,000 of these birds die due to their parents feeding them plastic that they mistakenly believe is food.  On a larger scale, more than a million birds and marine animals die every year from eating plastic or getting caught in debris.  If that statistic doesn’t call for a change, I’m not sure what will.

Fig. 2. Perez, Francis. Sea Turtle in Net.

However, if the safety of wildlife still doesn’t concern you, maybe the concept of bioaccumulation will.  Bioaccumulation means that the matter consumed by prey eventually ends up in predators, and so on up the food chain.  According to this principle, plastic consumed by sea turtles and other aquatic animals will eventually end up in the gastrointestinal systems of humans, barring some miracle.  As previously stated, 84% of these materials were found to have toxic chemicals as well, possibly putting humans in harm’s way.

Fig. 3. The Ocean Cleanup. Bioaccumulation in Humans.

Along with the health and biodiversity hazards associated with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes negative economic implications.  According to the United Nations, plastic pollution in marine environments costs $13 billion every year in beach cleanups and financial losses to fisheries.  These costs will only continue to increase as more garbage keeps streaming into our lakes and oceans.

Logically, attempts have been taken to try to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but initial results haven’t been very encouraging.  This past fall, a $20 million project was embarked on by the Ocean Cleanup to try to remove large amounts of plastic.  However, it was determined that the apparatus the team was using was actually pretty bad at collecting plastic.  Boyan Slat, inventor of the device (a sort of floating barrier), said, “What we’re trying to do has never been done before. So, of course we were expecting to still need to fix a few things before it becomes fully operational.”  Slat and his team have gone back to the drawing board, so hopefully they can come up with an efficient way to remove this devastating trash from the Pacific Ocean.

If at first you weren’t concerned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, I hope you are now.  Unless we take drastic action, this problem will continue to grow for years to come.  And of course, this starts with all of us.  Throwing away disposable plastic has terrible effects on the environment and is an action that will take hundreds of years to undo.  Therefore, always try to recycle any plastic you use.  And better yet, try to use as little plastic as possible.  It might not seem important now, but the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is growing, and it would be best not to get caught dead in the water.