The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Environmental Article

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known variously as the Plastic soup, the Eastern Garbage Patch, or the Pacific Trash Vortex, is an area of marine debris in the North Pacific Gyre in the central North Pacific Ocean. Size estimates vary from an area equivalent to the state of Texas to double that of the continental United States.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been in the Pacific Ocean for over 2 decades. The person that had found this patch was a Professor Greenberg. The center of the North Pacific Gyre is a relatively stationary region of the North Pacific Ocean, an area often referred to as the horse latitudes. The circular rotation around it draws waste material in and has led to the accumulation of flotsam and other debris, so much so that the plastic debris gathers in concentrations of one million pieces of plastic per square mile in some areas. While historically this debris has biodegraded, the gyre is now accumulating vast quantities of plastic and marine debris. Rather than biodegrading, plastic photodegrades, disintegrating in the ocean into smaller and smaller pieces. These pieces, still polymers, eventually become individual molecules, which are still not easily digested. Some plastics photodegrade into other pollutants.

Humanity, if this goes on and on we may have one ocean less for our great grandchildren. Worse, if a trend fills the other oceans.