The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - The Worlds Largest Garbage Dump

Discovered in 1997, by an American oceanographer named Charles Moore, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is composed largely of a combination of different types of plastic, and other articles of trash floating out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There are actually several garbage patches, but the in the pacific ocean there are two. There is an Eastern and Western Pacific Garbage Patch. They are also connected by an ocean current and pick up trash from all over the world. The Western Garbage Patch is located between Japan and Hawaii. It is somewhat smaller than the one in question here, which is the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, located between California and Hawaii.

The Eastern Garbage Patch has been described as being very large, and compared to the size of the state of Texas; which is one of largest states, if not the largest state, located in the United States. Large circular ocean currents called a gyre hold the trash accumulations.

The largest parts of the garbage patch are floating on and below the surface of the ocean, so it is somewhat hard to see from above in aircraft or even when driving a boat through it. Over the years it has become more visible though.

This plastic concoction is also located in the middle of the ocean where boats rarely go, so that is why it may have gone unnoticed for so long. Another fact to consider is that most trash was more biodegradable 50 years ago.

Shorelines and beaches become trash dumps with plastic chip dunes and plastic sand beaches when areas of this toxic mix break free from the gyre and wash inshore. There are large areas of the ocean patches covered with bulkier pieces of trash that can be seen here and there, like old bouies, plastic toys, and old fish nets.

Largely unseen, however, the majority of Garbage Patch contains a high concentration of small pieces of non-biodegradable plastic, stringy melting pieces of plastic, Styrofoam, bottle caps, and anything that doesn't break down basically.

It is everything that escaped the garbage dumps somehow, or was dumped in the ocean, and now has broken down into small plastic chips.

The negative effects on wildlife have and will be profound with deaths by ingestion or getting tangled up in the lager pieces of trash like old fishing nets and those infamous six pack plastic rings.

It is obvious that the animals are eating the trash, with pictures like the one in the above You Tube video. The bird ate plastic pieces of trash because it is colorful, and in abundance. It died because birds, or any other kind of animals, cannot digest plastic and they cannot pass larger pieces of it and it blocks up their system and they die. They sadly feed it to their young, not knowing that it will kill them.

Scientists are more concerned however with what will happen when all this plastic gets down to the molecular level in the food chain of the ocean. It has already been found that BPA plastic is harmful to rats and humans. Hence, the scare a couple years back in 2008 with baby bottles containing BPA plastics. All those old bottle containing BPA are either in landfills now, or will eventually end up out in the ocean with the rest of them.

More and more efforts are taking place to better understand this predicament of ocean pollution and to try to clean up as much as possible before any more damage can occur.

Some water samples indicate that in areas of the pacific garbage patch off the coast of California there are more non-marine flotsam particles than there are live marine particles. In some cases the ratio 6 non live particle to 1 one live particle.

To remove the this waste would be counter productive. You would be removing the plastic particle waste along with a large portion of the tiny animals, like plankton and phytoplankton that make up the basis of the food chain, and that are mixed up in it.

A new study was done on the effect of "Nurdles" or plastic pellets (pictured on the right), and it was found that they absorb and hold toxins in highly concentrated amounts. This process is explained in more detail in the You Tube video above.

It is still widely unknown what effects the toxic mess of the pacific garbage patch has had, and will have, upon the life of this planet.

Registered @: http://www.myfreecopyright.com

MCN: WKRWT_X4D8J_P525P