Pacific pollution
There aren’t many human-made disasters that are as large or as visible as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. There’s nothing particularly complicated about what’s happened here: a huge amount of rubbish has made its way into our oceans over the past decades because of negligent humans. The patch stretches from the Californian coast, all the way across the Pacific Ocean to Japan, and it’s actually composed of two different tracts of trash – one on the western side of the ocean and another on the east. Currents combine to suck rubbish into a vortex, and these tiny objects can’t escape. The
Great Pacific Garbage Patch isn’t just made up of crisp packets and drink bottles. Most of the plastic in the patch has broken down into tiny pieces that simply make the water look cloudy, and ecologists estimate that 70 per cent of ocean debris sinks to the bottom of the sea, so there could be far more below the surface.
The patch’s size varies: estimates range that it sits between 270,271 and 5,791,532 square miles depending on sea movement. Some of the items in the patch are over 50 years old, because most plastics just aren’t biodegradable. Scientists think it’s becoming ten times bigger with every passing decade. Unsurprisingly, the patch has a terrible effect on wildlife. Marine animals can get caught in bits of plastic or in abandoned fishing nets, and animals can die when they mistake plastic items for food. The patch has a huge impact on the ocean’s ecosystems because plastics can leak pollutants and block sunlight from algae and plankton. Cleaning this up can only be effective once we’ve significantly reduced our huge dependance on plastics.
“The patch stretches from the Californian coast to Japan”