Talk:Great Pacific garbage patch/Archive 3

References & Citations
This article needs to have many of the media references removed. Having looked at various media reports, I see that many use this article as a basis for the information they publish; if we in turn reference them it creates a disinformative feedback loop. There is plenty of scientific material available, so, although media sources can be cited with respect to how the Patch is reported on or to document efforts to study the area, they should not be used to establish any of the basic facts about the patch (size, density, mass, ecological consequences, etc...). For this kind of information, the standard should be academic material published in peer-reviewed journals. Plumbago may have a thought about this as well. Eusebeus (talk) 08:39, 26 February 2010 (UTC)'''


 * I agree. Some of the existing citations are reliable secondary sources, but some are not.  If you have specific references that you know are sourced from Wikipedia, then those citations should be tagged inline with Verify credibility as Wikipedia policy is very specific about not using circular references.  Other useful tags for source problems are listed here.  Cheers. N2e (talk) 13:30, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Sources for this article are still terrible. I dug up a bunch of proper cites several years ago in the literature but I note with dismay that the first four cites are shit newspaper stories, including the straight dope as a reference concerning why we cannot see it! This is simply unacceptable and unencyclopedic. Moreover, a quick trip to Google Scholar turns up plenty of freely available scientific papers on the topic. So, here are some proper refs to be added in and I will junk the newspaper stories. Eusebeus (talk) 08:27, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * For this kind of information, the standard should be academic material published in peer-reviewed journals. Is there a reason for that? As long as a cite is from a reliable source, it doesn't matter whether that source is a newspaper or a scientific paper.
 * I would remind Eusebeus that this is not their article, and that discussion on the talk page and in edit summaries should be polite. Alastairward (talk) 12:43, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * You are correct, there is nothing that says that articles about garbage patches must cite nothing but scientific peer-reviewed journals. If s/he wants to add those as well, that's fine, but the news articles should be kept as long as they meet WP:RS, which as far as I can tell, they do. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 17:43, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with the main thrust of what Alastairward and Jrtayloriv have said above. It is appropriate to remove unreliable sources (perhaps straight dope is such an example).  But academic journals are often not the very best source for Wikipedia as they are typically primary sources, which "are often difficult to use appropriately."
 * Rather, WP should be, in the main, sourced with reliable secondary sources. This does not mean that an article can have no primary sources like the academic journal articles, but in sections that too heavily rely on such sources, it is easy to fall into synthesis and violate the WP policy on original research.N2e (talk) 23:17, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * At the very least, it makes little sense that current references 3 and 4 go to articles about the same exact Oregon State analysis -- the katu.com article and "OCEANIC 'GARBAGE PATCH' NOT NEARLY AS BIG AS PORTRAYED IN MEDIA" . We could put dozens of convincing sources at the bottom all referring to one study.  It would look very impressive indeed.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.228.103.84 (talk) 20:12, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Hello, I was looking at the sources for this article and noticed a few with problems. The problems I've noticed have to do with the Moore references; three are broken, two of which are repeats of each other. References #4 and #17 reference the same broken link, while the 2005 article about plastic density in zooplankton under "further reading" is broken as well.JuanL0pez97 (talk) 06:43, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Does it even exist?
I was just reading a Wall Street Journal article about plastic bags and this enviro-crusader claimed that the patch does not really exist. I began to think maybe it was a legend like sea monsters of old. How would we landlubbers even know! I came here (Ive been here before years ago) and noticed that there is no picture of it. I even remember going on Google Maps once and seeing nothing. So, does it really exist? Has there been any flyover or anything? Its really interesting that its kind of like a legendary sea monster.--Metallurgist (talk) 15:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I tried to make the same point before, but was met with a very aggressive attitude here. But in the last two years I have seen no evidence that convinces me that there relay is a Great Garbage Patch. I think this thing is still alive because the maps with arrows and the whole story has a narrative that is easy to understand, imagine and is interesting, more than that there relay is such a patch. Jacealcard (talk) 19:06, 13 April 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi to both of you. I can't post this to the page itself, since I suspect it would represent original research, but I've been to the patch as part of a scientific research voyage.  There was no visible "island" of trash, but the amount of visible flotsam increased relative to other parts of the ocean I've been in.  Furthermore the net tows we did had significantly larger amounts of plastic in them than net tows in other parts of the Pacific.  The patch isn't visible from space or air because most of the plastic pieces are on the scale of millimeters.  If you go to the websites for SEAPLEX, or Kaisei or SUPER HI-CAT, some scientific expeditions to the patch, there are some pictures available.Picosaur (talk) 01:51, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

Plastic seen in most waters is a suitable harbor for algae and other life. It's intrinsicly bouyant and floats on the surface where sun nourishes algae and many nutrients concentrate. Often fish will school around flotsam to feed on life harboring in it. Decaying life creates gas bubbles and increases floating plastic's already bouyant nature. The claim that the plastic particles are both "too small and float too far below the surface to be seen" doesn't fit the nature of plastic flotsam and life that harbors on it that is seen anywhere else. 98.164.80.209 (talk) 10:42, 25 November 2015 (UTC)


 * Calling it a "patch" may be an element of a P.R. campaign. I'm thinking of merging or moving all the garbage patch articles into one big article called Concentrations of marine debris - which has a neutral title. The term "concentrations" does not bring up images of a floating junkyard - with hundreds of 10 cm or 12 inch plastic bottles per square yard. And even 4 not-visible-to-the-naked-eye particles per cubic meter may be too much for some people. But the title doesn't downplay it or play it up. --Uncle Ed (talk) 12:24, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree, the name "Patch" is Public relations terms, "concentration of Marine Debrits" is better. Milton (talk) 20:30, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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Archive Bot incomplete
The Archive that the bot created was incomplete. I have temporarily restored old discussions here. Can someone who understands the bot better than I work out why it didn't archive all the discussions it deleted. SPACKlick (talk) 05:01, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Ingestion of toxics Chemicals
"Many of these fish are then consumed by humans, resulting in their ingestion of toxic chemicals" this need to be proved, because plastic travels the digestive system and are ejected. Plastics are NOT absorbed by wildlife or humans. The reference point to a newspaper article -no longer available- but its tittle suggest another content.

Also "Some of these long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine animals" this not true the plastic don't "END" in the stomachs, they move forward and are expelled.

Plastics are not digestible !!!

The articles have a heavy use of newspapers articles, usually writen by journalist, this don´t look like a reliable secondary source.

effects on wildlife and humans
I added a paragraph to the section that talks about the effects on humans and wildlife. If I can get some feedback on what I edited I would appreciate it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ottolinof (talk • contribs) 14:38, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

Thinking of ways to improve this article and a couple of items i may work on are 1) When reading up on the journals maybe there is a new angle to look at the garbage patch to enlighten readers and 2) I would like to tackle revising some of the verbiage on the information section as it was hard to understand the first time i read through it - maybe some editing here Laura.smith450 (talk) 20:59, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

I have reviewed the section that talks about the effects of human and widlife. I did change (They consume it and the plastic enters the food chain. This can lead to greater problems when species start consuming species that have ingested plastics.) to When marine life consumes plastic allowing it to enter the food chain, this can lead to greater problems when species that have consumed plastic are being eaten by other predators. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C0:5900:D080:C1F9:4E12:A60A:112B (talk) 02:47, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

I have two additions to Current Research Section: Please review Laura.smith450 (talk) 21:29, 19 May 2018 (UTC)

Current research from Scientific Reports volume 8, Article number: 4666 shows that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic[73]. They surveyed buoyant ocean plastic with multiple vessels in July through September 2015 and aerial surveys in 2016. They are quoted “Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and aircraft surveys, predicted at least 79 (45–129) thousand tonnes of ocean plastic are floating inside an area of 1.6 million km2; a figure four to sixteen times higher than previously reported.”

Dutch innovator Boyan Slat has been working on an ocean cleanup array that is a passive system that will float on the ocean surface and collect plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Based on his 2012 TedEx talk[74]. However, he recently announced there is a new prototype that is more efficient, cost effective and will theoretically collect plastic faster[75]. The new prototype is scheduled to be in service in 12 months, roughly in 2019, and is a simplified version of the first prototype designed. This new prototype will be smaller and have floating anchors approximately 600 meters beneath the surface, floating with the currents to where the plastic trash is located.

Change to being "Plastic soup"
This is an excellent and carefully researched page, but with the major problem that it is largely not about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch specifically but about the plastic soup in general - a topic that is of major interest worldwide at the moment, and that affects seas and rivers and other oceans too. The term "plastic soup" redirects to this page, which is therefore a bit odd.

As a European, affected by the plastic soup locally (and I've recently translated a book on the subject, so I've learned plenty about it!) I don't expect to be referred to things happening off Hawaii...

For that reason, it seems sensible to me to move most of the content of this page to a separate one for "plastic soup", and restrict the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to that specific topic. I'd happily do that, but I don't want to steal anyone's thunder. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MikeypediaNL (talk • contribs) 23:57, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Photo
It would be great to have a photo that is verifiably a free-licensed photo of the Great Pacific garbage patch - WM Commons, Duckduckgo and Google don't seem to have any obvious big-scale (e.g. a few hundred metres across at mid-image) photos (even non-free-licensed) that are claimed by a reasonable source to be photos of it. Obviously it's not so easy to get there and it's not a favourite tourist attraction... ("Buy your souvenir plastic gadgets here!"). Maybe scientists studying it would be willing to free-license a few photos... Boud (talk) 17:54, 11 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Maggy Hunter Benson states that "this is no island or blanket of trash that can be seen with satellite or aerial photographs—most of the floating trash is tiny pieces of plastic, many of them so small as to be invisible to the human eye." So apparently the photos we typically see are "public motivation" photos rather than literal photos of the phenomenon itself. So creating a scientifically accurate photo would not be so easy - maybe an aerial or satellite photo in infrared showing temperature or albedo differences could provide an image useful for "directly" showing the garbage patch. Boud (talk) 18:08, 11 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm not satisfied with the current main picture either, it doesn't help the reader understand the topology of the garbage patch, it doesn't dispel the common myth that the garbage patch is tangible, dense and has clear limits. I found two candidates:

Extrapolated estimates: https://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/1000_1x_/public/vizdata_map_key.jpg?itok=7myhqx2P Source of extrapolated estimates : https://www.popsci.com/five-trillion-pieces-plastic-are-floating-ocean-near-you-3 Raw samples : https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/111/28/10239/F1.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1 Source of raw samples: https://www.pnas.org/content/111/28/10239

They both visualize surface plastic density across the world map, the raw samples would be a safe, neutral bet, but it's more confusing and requires interpretation to understand the possible concentration of the plastics. The extrapolated estimates give a more complete visualization of the density of plastics accross the sea, however the methodology for creating such an image requires more trust in the scientists who developed it. I decided to go for the extrapolated version since it more accurately accomplishes the purpose of conveying the shape of the plastic masses to the reader, I think the tradeoff of using a less reputable source is warranted (Popular science vs Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences of USA).

I will be emailing for permission to use the extrapolated estimates image.Since I haven't made many contributions to the wiki, I wanted to be transparent with my thought process. Thoughts? Thanks! --TZubiri (talk) 22:06, 7 December 2018 (UTC)

First paragraph
I'm struggling to understand a part of the first paragraph: "It extends over an indeterminate area of widely varying range, depending on the degree of characterized by exceptionally high relative pelagic concentrations of plastic, chemical sludge, and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre". How is it "dependant on the degree of characterized by..."? If someone who is more knowledgeable on the subject could alter it or explain it that would be great. Thanks JJThunder1 (talk) 20:13, 23 May 2019 (UTC)

It looks like that sentence is the result of two sentences being combined in a way that makes them totally incomprehensible. I've made it back into two sentences that should explain things better. Thanks for pointing it out.Picosaur (talk) 00:52, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2021 and 20 December 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NovaKK, Rdery, Tguagent.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:57, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2021 and 3 May 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nahpyma.

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Minor CE
Hello, I did a ce quick run through in this article; here's what I found/changed:
 * 1) Minor spacing issues - fixed the ones I found.
 * 2) Extra word in this sentence: In order to also account for the larger, but more rare larger debris, they also overflew the patch in 2016 with a C-130 Hercules aircraft, equipped with LiDAR sensors.

I changed it to "in order to also account for the larger, more rare debris..."


 * 1) Sections with complex claims not sourced individually. Multiple citations are added at the end of sections makes it hard to tell which source is supporting which claim. This makes source checking and claim validation harder.


 * This sentence:
 * 118 net tows were conducted and nearly 70,000 pieces of plastic were counted.


 * I changed it by spelling out the number at the beginning of the sentence. Also, based on a text search, neither number appears in the source. I flagged that sentence as a failed verification.

Ok that's it :) Thanks! Curdigirl (talk) 18:47, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

I'm disappointed in humanity. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.154.168.20 (talk) 19:37, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

To The numbers: The article says that 18'000 tons of plastic and other debris form the GPGP. Other sources (f.i. WWF) say that 86'000'000 t of such debris are floating within the oceans. Can it really be true that only 0.1% of all maritime garbage are part of the GPGP? can both numbers be correct or is one of them off? I suspect the latter is correct. Can someone check this?212.41.125.24 (talk) 14:19, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

92+94%
92%+94% is greater than 100%. Jidanni (talk) 12:45, 30 November 2019 (UTC)

Move the section on "Effect on marine life and humans" to garbage patch
I suggest to move the section on "Effect on marine life and humans" to garbage patch as that one is the higher level article. I suggest to refocus this article to contain only information that is specific to the Great Pacific garbage patch; any information that relates to ANY garbage patch should be at garbage patch. A similar suggestion was made in 2018 on this talk page (scroll up) where someone suggested to move content to plastic soup. I am currently on a mission to consolidate everything about plastic pollution in oceans in one place (see also talk page here). The advantage would be that we'd only have to update data in one page (and just link to it from the other pages). EMsmile (talk) 07:26, 9 September 2021 (UTC)

Enviornmental Effects Section
There are obviously so many effects and I know it would probably sounds redundant to add more in this section, so either take some information from other portions and put it in here, or go more in to specific events or details that were caused by the pollution from the great pacific garbage patch.

It would also be good to add a policy section and how we should be looking into policies to reduce and stop garbage from entering the patch. — Preceding unsigned comment added by K1carter (talk • contribs) 23:11, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

Europe is smol
Every country in europe together would be big enough to fill it but the countries alone can’t it would have been a cool topic to talk about during it’s size comparison. 79.11.184.178 (talk) 09:03, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

sic
Hello I removed that because I assumed it was an error. I don't understand why  requires that. What is that? Do I not understand ? Invasive Spices (talk) 30 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Many people consider "comprised of" (in which the word "comprise" is used as synonymous with "compose") to be poor writing, and as a result, some editors, especially I, reword it when we find it in Wikipedia. My essay User:Giraffedata/comprised of goes into great detail about the "comprised of" dispute.  That page also explains the sic tag: Where Wikipedia uses the phrase in a quotation, we need to make sure not to edit it by mistake.  The tag warns an editor that it is inside a quotation (not always obvious in source view) and even allows an editor to search just for the instances that are not in quotations.
 * I have many times edited a quotation by mistake, and it's a particularly nasty error because unless someone is watching the article and vetting every copy edit, the quotation could be corrupted for all time. So the tag is a good thing.  Bryan Henderson (giraffedata) (talk) 03:57, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

Do we have an actual map location of the patch?
All evidence points to this not even existing. It's a made up issue by climate change activists. Can you provide a satellite image? And a location? 129.135.1.208 (talk) 15:05, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Why there is no real (satellite) picture of the garbage patch? Cersorship, perhaps? 83.40.31.234 (talk) 16:11, 30 December 2022 (UTC)

There's a 2017 density map at the top of the article. The second paragraph explains that it's largely microplastics which even a boat passing through it might not notice. The idea of it being a solid mass of floating garbage is a misconception. --Belbury (talk) 11:43, 31 December 2022 (UTC)