North Pacific Garbage Gyre Now Twice The Size Of Continental United States

[hatrack]

IT has been described as the world's largest rubbish dump, or the Pacific plastic soup, and it is starting to alarm scientists. It is a vast area of floating plastic debris. It is a vast area of plastic debris and other flotsam drifting in the northern Pacific Ocean, held there by swirling ocean currents.

Discovered in 1997 by American sailor Charles Moore, what is also called the great Pacific garbage patch is now alarming some with its ever-growing size and possible impact on human health. The "patch" is in fact two huge, linked areas of circulating rubbish, says Dr Marcus Eriksen, research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, founded by Moore.

Although the boundaries change, it stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the northern Pacific to near the coast of Japan. The islands of Hawaii are placed almost in the middle, so piles of plastic regularly wash up on some beaches there.

"The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup," Dr Eriksen says. "It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States," he says.

EDIT

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,23157068-952,00.html

[ORDagnabbit]

1. I wonder if there is a satellite photo of it? n/t

[TommyO]

3. I was wondering the same thing.

[jkshaw]

6. There was a slide show or video

of it back in the summer. I think it was on the LATimes site. It was truly upsetting to see. Recycling at the source seems to me to be the first thing we should do -- and I do recycle everything I possibly can.

[brystheguy]

9. I watched a video of where they went through this on a boat. . . .

and was pretty unimpressed. I expected to see this huge thing of actual floating garbage as far as the eye can see. It's not like that at all. They would stand on the boat and say, "there's one" and scoop the piece of plastic in to the boat. There were a lot of pieces in the water but nothing like what I had imagined. From the surface looking out, it just looks like the regular ocean. This situation will not bring attention to the issue when people actually see that everything looks totally normal and is not what they think it is. I'm more saddened by seeing piles of plastic on the beaches. That has more of an impact on me than this gyre does.

[emmadoggy]

11. From the article...

Because the plastic is translucent and lies just beneath the surface, it is apparently undetectable by satellite photos.

"It is not like going to a parking lot after a rugby match. It is not like a landfill," he says.

"The material is breaking down continually. It is photodegrading all the time. It is what I call a kaleidoscope or an alphabet soup. You won't see it from a satellite shot of the ocean. You only see it from the bows of ships," he says.

[Javaman]

17. That's exactly it. about 95% of it is under water

and the very worse part of it is that many a sea creature is mistaking much of it as food. Plastic bags = Jelly fish. Very fine bits of plastic = Krill.

It's really screwed up.

[kestrel91316]

2. I make a special effort these days to avoid acquiring ANY "disposable"

plastics. Grocery sacks, food packaging, whatever........I consider packaging before I make my purchase decisions.

And yes, I put as much as I can into recycling, but a lot isn't recyclable. That's why I "reduce, reuse, recycle" IN THAT ORDER.

[phantom power]

4. Is this the same one NPR just said was "only" the size of Texas?

My recollection is that there is actually more than one of these things.

[jkshaw]

5. I've read about and seen photos

of this gyre and it's indeed awful. Now it's twice the size of the continental US? What a tragedy! Especially for wildlife who eat the stuff and starve to death.

Has anyone on the board heard of efforts to gather this up? To begin aggressively to recycle plastic before it feeds this pile?

[phantom power]

7. BTW, the Yeats jokes sort of write themselves.

[DCKit]

8. Some brainiac is going to figure our how to mine...

then burn this crap for fuel and they're going to be a billionaire.

[emmadoggy]

10. Here's a link to the LA Times article about this...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean30jul30,0,952130.story?page=1

It's long, but well worth the read. Very scary.

It's shocking and horrific what we've done to this planet.

On Edit: OOPS. That's not the article I was thinking of. Different, but equally scary ocean problem. I'll try to find the other link.

Ok. Here's the La Times link for the plastic ocean story... http://www.latimes.com/news/local/oceans/la-me-ocean2aug02,0,3130914.story?page=1

And here's another article about Moore and the gyre... http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm

[LibertyorDeath]

12. It's entering the food chain

http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cgi-bin/cms/search.cgi?action=search&keyword=Plastic+oceans&x=28&y=11



A vast swath of the Pacific, twice the size of Texas, is full of a plastic stew that is entering the food chain. Scientists say these toxins are causing obesity, infertility...and worse.

Fate can take strange forms, and so perhaps it does not seem unusual that Captain Charles Moore found his life’s purpose in a nightmare. Unfortunately, he was awake at the time, and 800 miles north of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.

http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/health-fitness/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we_2.shtml

[liberalla]

13. This is a GREAT article that I bookmarked last October

Our oceans are turning into plastic...are we?

This was the first article I read, and the first time I learned about the plastic graveyard in the Northern Pacific Ocean.

Look at this poor turtle/tortoise that was trapped in a piece of plastic. What a miserable life!




Excerpt:

"The more invisible and ubiquitous the pollution, the more likely it will end up inside us. And there’s growing—and disturbing—proof that we’re ingesting plastic toxins constantly, and that even slight doses of these substances can severely disrupt gene activity. “Every one of us has this huge body burden,” Moore says. “You could take your serum to a lab now, and they’d find at least 100 industrial chemicals that weren’t around in 1950.” The fact that these toxins don’t cause violent and immediate reactions does not mean they’re benign: Scientists are just beginning to research the long-term ways in which the chemicals used to make plastic interact with our own biochemistry.

In simple terms, plastic is a petroleum-based mix of monomers that become polymers, to which additional chemicals are added for suppleness, inflammability, and other qualities. When it comes to these substances, even the syllables are scary. For instance, if you’re thinking that perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) isn’t something you want to sprinkle on your microwave popcorn, you’re right. Recently, the Science Advisory Board of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) upped its classification of PFOA to a likely carcinogen. Yet it’s a common ingredient in packaging that needs to be oil- and heat-resistant. So while there may be no PFOA in the popcorn itself, if PFOA is used to treat the bag, enough of it can leach into the popcorn oil when your butter deluxe meets your superheated microwave oven that a single serving spikes the amount of the chemical in your blood.

Other nasty chemical additives are the flame retardants known as poly-brominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs). These chemicals have been shown to cause liver and thyroid toxicity, reproductive problems, and memory loss in preliminary animal studies. In vehicle interiors, PBDEs—used in moldings and floor coverings, among other things—combine with another group called phthalates to create that much-vaunted “new-car smell.” Leave your new wheels in the hot sun for a few hours, and these substances can “off-gas” at an accelerated rate, releasing noxious by-products.

Linked to obesity? I wonder if it might have something to do with the increased rate of autism. Supposedly these recent studies say there is no link between the mercury used in the vaccine, and I've always felt they were lying. I mean, what else would they say? BUT, if "even slight doses of these substances can severely disrupt gene activity", is it possible that it could have something to do with the increased autism? and not be related to the mercury preservative? It really makes you think.

I recommend this article as a good introduction to the subject, a good link to send to your friends and family.



Look at the plastic this bird consumed, but was never able to pass.

[tavalon]

14. By the way, your suspicion about autism and mercury

and other metals is in fact right. I did the research and found out that the CDC monkeyed with their own research to make it look like it wasn't part of the problem. The way they did it was to dilute their pool by adding children who were too young to have been diagnosed. The solution to pollution is dilution - that, and finding a corrupt scientist willing to change his own study and then sign up for a $600,000 a year job with Merck. Verstaeden (sp) was his name and I've said that I now know how much a soul is worth. He sold his to the devil.

The autism thing is multifactorial, but the thimerosal was part of the puzzle. It was the part our government covered up.

[emmadoggy]

18. Thank you. That is the link I was trying to find.

I too, read that article and it was deeply disturbing and the first I had heard about it.

I could have sworn I had it bookmarked, but couldn't find it. Thanks for providing it.

[ramapo]

15. Twice the continental United States?

I read this a few times. It is true? If so, it is absolutely mind-boggling. I've read about this "patch" but didn't realize it was so extensive. The degree to which we've fucked up this planet sometimes just leaves me feeling rather limp and hopeless.

[Heywood J]

16. In five or ten years, that's going to be some country's

reserve fuel source - most of it is made from oil and is probably flammable. In ten years, I doubt many countries will be able to care what fumes come from burning it in power stations.