THE GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, the garbage patch is two distinct collections of debris bounded by the massive North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. A gyre is defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as a large system of swirling ocean currents.

However, it also refers to the air-bags patch as a vortex of plastic waste and debris broken down into small particles in the ocean. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is formed by four currents rotating clockwise around an area of 20 million square kilometres: the California current, the North Equatorial current, the Kuroshio current, and the North Pacific current. Most debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is plastic. Plastic is not biodegradable, meaning it does not disintegrate and simply breaks into tinier and tinier pieces, known as microplastics. Many people picture a «garbage patch» as an island of trash floating on the ocean when in reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of micro-plastic. Micro-plastics can’t always be seen by the naked eye. Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. The micro-plastic of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look cloudy, intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes. No one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch because it is too large for scientists to trawl. In addition, not all of the trash floats on the surface. Denser debris can sink up to several meters beneath the surface, making it nearly impossible to measure. 80 percent of the plastic in the ocean is estimated to come from land-based sources, with the remaining 20 percent coming from boats and other marine sources. However, these percentages can vary by region.

Beach cleaning

Big fishing net

Marine debris can be very harmful to marine life in the gyre. For instance, loggerhead sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellies, and 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 mainly due to inclement weather and illegal fishing. Seals and other mammals often drown in these forgotten nets-a phenomenon known as “ ghost fishing” . If algae and plankton are threatened, and the entire food web may change. Animals that feed on them, 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, this will make seafood less available and more expensive for people. These dangers are compounded by the fact that plastics both leach out and absorb harmful pollutants. As plastics break down through photo-degradation, they leach out colorants and chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), that have been linked to environmental and health problems. Conversely, plastics can also absorb pollutants, such as PCBs, from seawater. These chemicals cab them enter the food chain when consumed by marine life.

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 nutrients from carbon and sunlight.

It’s really difficult to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch because most of the plastic is micro-plastic or below the surface, which makes it difficult to remove from the ocean. Another problem is the size of the patch, also mentioned earlier in the article. However, there is an organization, which tries to get plastic out of the ocean. The Ocean Cleanup is a nonprofit organization developing and scaling technologies to rid the oceans of plastic. They work on a combination of closing the sources of plastic pollution and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean and doesn’t go away by itself. Their goal is to remove 90 percent of floating ocean plastic by 2040. To achieve this goal they created a U-shaped net system nicknamed «Jenny». Guided by two boats, the half-mile-long installation works by catching large and small debris from the seawater in a funnel-shaped net. Once it is full of trash, workers empty the plastic onto the boat before taking it ashore to recycle. Another positive aspect of this installation is that it is not a danger to marine life, because of its slow speed. In Jenny ’s final test run, the team found the system scooped 19,841 pounds of debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Removing 20,000 pounds of trash is a feat, but only addresses a small piece of the problem. A 2018 study estimated that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains roughly 79,000 tons of plastic. The cleanup installation showed promising results, but most researchers agree efforts should also be put toward preventing plastic from entering the ocean in the first place. A 2020 study found that more than 11 million tons of plastic are being dumped into oceans every year, a figure that could nearly triple by 2040. Installations like Jenny also do little to address the substantial accumulation of plastics on the ocean floor.

So it may not be possible to entirely get rid of garbage patches. Some of the materials will take a very long time to break down in the environment, while other materials, like plastics, may never fully go away. Large debris, like fishing nets, can be removed by people, but debris in the garbage patches is also mostly made up of micro-plastic. To prevent marine debris, we need to understand where it is coming from. It’s hard to identify specific sources, but we know that marine debris can enter our waterways and ocean in a variety of ways. Ineffective or improper waste management, dumping or littering, andФstormwater runoff all leads to to marine debris. If we want to stop pollution everyone, including the government, businesses, and people, will have to make some meaningful changes.

Muriel KLEIN Marlene SEELMEYER