Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Cancer of the Ocean

Date: 2010.03.05 | Category: Uncategorized | Tags:

“Around 100 million tons of plastics are produced each year, about 10 million tons of which ends up in the sea” -Greenpeace

The ocean’s a big place.  Problem is, it’s almost too big.  Hard to notice when something’s wrong, and when we’re the cause of it.  Because you see, the ocean has a terrible cancer growing in a place known as the North Pacific Gyre.  Because of the immense scale and, therefore, expense of studying this problem, scientists are inconclusive of the exact present dangers, but threats to the entire ecosystem could become very serious very quickly if this Great Pacific Garbage Patch continues on its current path.

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

In oceanography, a gyre is a large vortex created by vast rotating ocean currents.  The North Pacific Gyre in particular is formed by the North Pacific Current, the California Current, the North Equatorial Current, and the Kuroshio Current.  What’s unique about this particular gyre is that, in conjunction with other currents, it becomes the final destination for runoff trash from nearly all of Asia and the west coast of the Americas.  It can take up to 5  years for the currents to float this trash here, but it all eventually  makes it; and this heap of plastic has been growing for over 50 years.

First thing that needs to be cleared up, is that while The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to be twice the size of Texas, it isn’t a physical plastic floating island that you could jump off your boat and run around on.  It is instead classified as an area with embarrassingly high levels of plastic bits suspended near the surface of the water. But this is nowhere near something to give a sigh of relief to.  Because, unfortunately, given the entire spectrum of sizes and depths of this suspended waste, plastics are being mistaken for lunch by animals all up and down the food chain, introducing toxins to multiple levels of the ecosystem.

To me, the issue that stands out more so than any other is of course the plastic’s relation to the ocean’s plankton.  ‘Cause if we can all think back to grade school for a minute, we can remember how plankton is the backbone to the entire food chain: zooplankton being the initial prey for nearly all fish larvae.  Mess with the plankton: everything and everyone feels the effects; and in the first paper documented in his 1999 study of the Garbage Patch, Captain  Charles Moore found 6 times more plastic fragments by weight than the associated zooplankton.  Not good.  Now, while the plankton reservoirs are denser to the north of the Pacific Gyre, this is still very frightening news, and shows the potential for the tumor that is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch could go virus-esque lytic on us in a moment’s notice.

Things To Remember:

• Every square kilometer of ocean hosts roughly 120,000 pieces of floating plastic – UN
• The world produced 300 billion pounds of plastic each year, about 10% ends up in the ocean – Greenpeace
• Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world’s oceans – LA Times 2 Aug 06
• It is estimated that over a million sea-birds and one hundred thousand marine mammals and sea turtles are killed each year by ingestion of plastics or entanglement. – Greenpeace

So what sort of stuff can we do to help fix this?  Well, it really all comes down to the little things that we all can chip in on, such as:

1. Get a reusable grocery/shopping bag or two. These things are as ubiquitous as crazy hats in an Alabama church on Easter Sunday, so get some and remember to use them!
2. The obvious one: recycle, recycle, recycle. Any plastic that doesn’t make it in the “blue bin”, or at least the trash can, gets into our waterways and eventually the ocean.  Every time.
3. For heaven’s sake, stop buying plastic bottled water. Get a reusable stainless steel bottle and save the oceans and some money in the long run!
4. We’ve all got travel mugs, so let’s keep them with us as much as we can, and stop buying disposable cups at Starbucks and 7-11 (and don’t forget the discounts they offer for bringing your own mug!)
5. No more disposable dish-ware and utensils.  Fellow bachelors, I know it’s way easier to use plastic stuff, and doing dishes is no fun, but let’s grow up and ditch the plastic forks, plates, and cups.

Because no one wants to end up like this guy

Cheers,

-Andrew