The Great Pacfic Garbage Patch 🗑️

By now, you have probably heard of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. If not, it's simply a floating island made up of any plastic trash you can imagine such as soda bottles, plastic bags, disposable utensils and many other plastic trash. In complexity, it is also made up of very small pieces of plastic not just large ones. 

Photo source: Lifescinceguru

There are five oceanic "garbage patches" which are located in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. The largest of them all is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. While large pieces of plastic do accumulate in the gyre, rather than being an island of plastic, in reality, this is more like a plastic soup, consisting mostly of tiny bits of invisible microplastic. Researchers have found higher concentrations of floating plastic in the gyres than anywhere else in the ocean.

Photo source: The Ocean Clean Up
The 5 oceanic " garbage patches"

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch spreads over 1.6 million square kilometres. That's about the size of 311 Trinidads'. It is 3200 times the size of Trinidad. And it contains at least 79,000 tons of material. That’s the equivalent of the mass of more than 6,500 school buses. It is located between Hawaii and California. 

Photo source: Lebretonetal Scientific Report 

This video above explains the Great Pacific Garbage Patch 

The video above showcases a video about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The video above showcases the threats to wildlife of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch 

The video above showcases the amount of plastic that is in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch 

Not only does plastic pollution in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch pose risks to the safety and health of marine animals, but there are health and economic implications for humans as well.

Floating at the surface of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 180x more plastic than marine life. Animals migrating through or inhabiting this area are then likely consuming plastic in the patch. Sea turtles living around the patch have up to 74%  of their diets composed of ocean plastics. Animals consuming this debris are ingesting the chemicals attached to the plastic.

There are many fishing nets in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. As you can imagine these can be dangerous for animals that swim into these nets. They can get stuck in them and eventually die. 

Once plastic enters the marine food web, there is a possibility that it will contaminate the human food chain as well. Chemicals in plastics will enter the body of the animal feeding on the plastic, and as the feeder becomes prey, the chemicals will pass to the predator. Making their way up the food web that includes humans. 


The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is getting denser every day with floating plastic. It is your job to stop it from taking over the entire ocean. 


References: 

L.Lebreton et al Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic (2018) 
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w#Sec10