Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog » Vast Garbage Float in the Pacific Ocean

November 5, 2007

Vast Garbage Float in the Pacific Ocean

Feds want to survey, possibly clean up vast garbage pit in Pacific:

Charles Moore, the marine researcher at the Algalita Marina Research Foundation in Long Beach who has been studying and publicizing the patch for the past 10 years, said the debris - which he estimates weighs 3 million tons and covers an area twice the size of Texas - is made up mostly of fine plastic chips and is impossible to skim out of the ocean. “Any attempt to remove that much plastic from the oceans - it boggles the mind,” Moore said from Hawaii, where his crew is docked. “There’s just too much, and the ocean is just too big.”

The trash collects in one area, known as the North Pacific Gyre, due to a clockwise trade wind that circulates along the Pacific Rim. It accumulates the same way bubbles gather at the center of hot tub, Moore said. A two-liter plastic bottle that begins its voyage from a storm drain in San Francisco will get pulled into the gyre and take weeks to reach its place among the other debris in the Garbage Patch. While the bottle floats along, instead of biodegrading, it will “photodegrade,” Moore said - the sun’s UV rays will turn the bottle brittle, much like they would crack the vinyl on a car roof. They will break down the bottle into small pieces and, in some cases, into particles as fine as dust.

by curiouscat Tags: Science, Students
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4 Responses to “Vast Garbage Float in the Pacific Ocean”

Rob Says:
November 6th, 2007 at 7:18 am
You know down here in Australia, its just amazing how much filth ends up on our beaches, sometimes rubbish with markings from overseas countries, when are people going to grow up…..
Stefanie Says:
November 9th, 2007 at 7:18 pm
Twice the size of Texas, you say? Perhaps we could exile the litterbugs and make them live on their new island…
CuriousCat » Dead Zones in the Ocean Says:
February 17th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
“the dead zone off the West Coast of North America has another cause: global warming. Here’s how it works: Winds cause the oceanic rivers of nutrients, such as the California Current in this case, to flow upwards from the deep, carrying nutrients and phyoplankton into the sunlight…”
CuriousCat: Biodegradable Plastic Bags and Bottles Says:
April 18th, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Plastic bags can photodegrade where they break down into small bits of plastic that might be hard to see but are still toxic that can be eaten by animals, and us…