Why is the world's biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean? In t. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is growing. Choking the Oceans With Plastic. A 'plastic soup' of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at. There's less than expected on the surface. Scientists are trying to find where in the ocean it's gone. Their work, published this month in the Proceedings of the. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Ocean containing a high concentration of marine debris. Pacific Ocean “Garbage Patch. Study Plastic Debris in the Ocean. 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. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean. The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever- accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas . The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The patches are connected by a thin 6,0. Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone. The garbage patches present numerous hazards to marine life, fishing and tourism. But before we discuss those, it's important to look at the role of plastic. Plastic constitutes 9. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2. In some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one. Of the more than 2. Seventy percent of that eventually sinks, damaging life on the ocean floor . The rest floats; much of it ends up in gyres and the massive garbage patches that form there, with some plastic eventually washing up on a distant shore. Scientists study 'garbage patch' in Pacific Ocean(CNN) - - It is a problem of massive plastic proportions - - a giant floating debris field, composed mostly of bits and pieces of plastic, in the northwest Pacific Ocean, about a thousand miles off the coast of California. Researchers recover nets from the Pacific Ocean on August 3, 2. It's called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and it covers a vast area of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of miles of open ocean. Now researchers are trying to learn more about the sea- bound trash zone and perhaps find answers to basic questions. The mission is not as straightforward as it sounds. But the other side of the puzzle is all the little bits and pieces of plastic that you can't even see unless you scoop up a sample of seawater and see what's in there. So even a few pieces of plastic per square meter amounts to a lot of plastic when you add it up over this enormous ocean area. It's been very poorly studied in a scientific sense. Major questions remain: How how much stuff is there? What size is the stuff? Where is it distributed in the ocean, at the surface or at what depth? What does it do to the food chain, especially the small particles of plastic that may be ingested by smaller organisms at the bottom of the food chain? While the main focus of the Scripps mission is the impact of this plastic trash on marine life, researchers will gather information on a wide variety of issues. Here's what scientists do know: They know the size of this zone is huge, maybe as big as Texas. And they know that all the plastic accumulated in the patch has mostly broken down into smaller bits, floating just under the water's surface like confetti, basically a soupy mix of plastic- filled seawater that stretches for maybe thousands of miles. They know the garbage patch has been growing for many years, and scientists first became aware of the problem years ago when fisherman reported encountering widespread debris. They know there are other debris fields in other oceans of the world, but this one is the biggest. But the plastic is really the toxic killer. While it slowly degrades, it turns into increasingly smaller bits of plastic. Seabirds mistake it for food and they dive down and eat it. Brainard says they find a lot of skeletons of seabirds on the Islands and . As the larger animals and marine life eat the smaller animals, this plastic eventually ends up in the human food supply, too. But even the size is of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is uncertain. It's a little bit like a whirlpool on the surface of a river or a lake. You'd be hard- pressed to tell me where the edge is. All you know is that it's stronger in the middle than it is in the outer reaches. But it's an area of many hundreds of miles - - perhaps thousands - - in which the ocean currents tend to bring it together. Scientists know it moves as much as a thousand miles north and south in the Pacific seasonally. And during warmer ocean periods, known as El Nino, it drifts even further south. A kind of large, clock- wise circulation of currents driven by the wind around the Pacific ocean basin causes the plastic and other garbage to mix together in convergence zones, forming this giant trash zone and making its movements comparable to a whirlpool. Researchers believe this enormous trash zone accumulated over many years from trash being dumped off boats and ocean- going ships, and from trash accumulated on beaches, where it eventually washed in the Pacific Ocean and into the huge zone. This study mission may even help scientists determine whether there's any way to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and, if so, the best way to do it. CNN's Ninette Sosa contributed to this report. All About. Pacific Ocean . National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2016
Categories |