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Research notes on the great pacific garbage patch

What

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water.

Area/geographical location

While "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" is a term often used by the media, it does not paint an accurate picture of the marine debris problem in the North Pacific ocean. Marine debris concentrates in various regions of the North Pacific, not just in one area. The exact size, content, and location of the "garbage patches" are difficult to accurately predict.

spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawai'i and California.

These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawai'i. This convergence zone is where warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another.

Types of rubbish

For many people, the idea of a “garbage patch” conjures up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics can’t always be seen by the naked eye.

A 2018 study found that synthetic fishing nets made up nearly half the mass of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,

plastics make up the majority of marine debris

Most of this debris comes from plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and Styrofoam cups.

The name "Pacific Garbage Patch" has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items such as bottles and other litter—akin to a literal island of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. This is not the case. While higher concentrations of litter items can be found in this area, much of the debris is actually small pieces of floating plastic that are not immediately evident to the naked eye.

. It’s estimated that microplastics make up 94% of the object count at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. A square kilometre of it can contain as many as 750,000 individual pieces.

Where has the rubbish come from

80 percent of plastic in the ocean is estimated to come from land-based sources, with the remaining 20 percent coming from boats and other marine sources.

Why has it collected in the area

The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre

The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is formed by four currents rotating clockwise around an area of 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles): the California current, the North Equatorial current, the Kuroshio current, and the North Pacific current.

The circular motion of the gyre draws debris into this stable center, where it becomes trapped

Environmental impacts of rubbish

Marine debris can be very harmful to marine life in the gyre. For instance, loggerhead sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellies, their favorite food. Albatrosses mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks, which die of starvation or ruptured organs.

Seals and other marine mammals are especially at risk. They can get entangled in abandoned plastic fishing nets, which are being discarded largely due to inclement weather and illegal fishing. Seals and other mammals often drown in these forgotten nets—a phenomenon known as “ghost fishing.”

Marine debris can also disturb marine food webs in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. As microplastics and other trash collect on or near the surface of the ocean, they block sunlight from reaching plankton and algae below. Algae and plankton are the most common autotrophs, or producers, in the marine food web. Autotrophs are organisms that can produce their own nutrients from carbon and sunlight.

If algae and plankton communities are threatened, the entire food web may change. Animals that feed on algae and plankton, such as fish and turtles, will have less food. If populations of those animals decrease, there will be less food for apex predators such as tuna, sharks, and whales. Eventually, seafood becomes less available and more expensive for people.

Debris found in any region of the ocean can easily be ingested by marine species causing choking, starvation, and other impairments.

1 million seabirds are 100000 marine mammals are affected every year, as well as many other species. For example, turtles often mistake plastic bags for prey such as jellyfish. Abandoned fishing lines, fishing nets and equipment can ensnare and drown dolphins, porpoises and whales.

Even humans aren’t free from the potential dangers of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Microplastics have been found in the stomachs of nearly half of the most important species for global fisheries. This means we could be eating our own trash.

Longterm effects

Physical impact on marine life: entanglement, ingestion, starvation. Chemical impact: the buildup of persistent organic pollutants like PCBs and DDT. Transport of invasive species and pollutants from polluted rivers to remote areas in the ocean. Economic impact: damage to fisheries, shipping, and tourism.

While the immediate medical risks are negligible, as most of the microplastics found in fish are in the guts, the future is a lot less certain.

As microplastics continue to break down they form nanoplastics. Nanoplastics have the capacity to enter muscle tissues - the part of fish we do eat. If these plastics make their way up the food chain and into our bodies, there are concerns over potential health implications.

Seals, turtles and seabirds often get entangled and drown in abandoned fishing nets and other miscellaneous debris, and toxins both from the breakdown of plastics and those that the plastics themselves absorb, can collect in marine organisms and be damaging to their health and to the aquatic food web as a whole.

Importance of marine environments

The ocean regulates our climate and provides the air we breathe. ...

The ocean feeds us. ...

It provides jobs and livelihoods. ...

The ocean is a tool for economic development. ...

We need a healthy ocean to survive.

Strategies and recommendations to solve rubbish problem

Because the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is so far from any country’s coastline, no nation will take responsibility or provide the funding to clean it up.

Many individuals and international organizations, however, are dedicated to preventing the patch from growing.

The Ocean Cleanup is cleaning up floating plastics caught swirling in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a plastic accumulation zone with over 100,000,000 kilograms of plastic.

The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit organization developing and scaling technologies to rid the oceans of plastic.

Charles Moore, who discovered the patch in 1997, continues to raise awareness through his own environmental organization, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation

The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers and ecologists recently discovered that about 70 percent of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.