Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Where is All the Ocean Plastic?

 

Plastic has become an indispensable part of our lives. We can see plastic everywhere around us, it presents from the smallest to the largest from around us. Our phones are made from plastic to the cars we drive.

People have thrown garbage in the oceans for a long time, from the very beginning of human existence on this planet. But we never have taken a hint or cared of what is happening to nature. According to scientists, there has been a huge amount of garbage thrown in the oceans.

But most of the plastic waste seems to be missing from the oceans. It cannot be found on land or in any water body. So the question arises, where is all the waste?

What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, is a garbage patch, located in the central North Pacific Ocean. The garbage patch is a collection of plastic debris and other trash that has been disposed of in the oceans around the world. It is divided into two areas.

The ‘Eastern Garbage Patch’, which is located between Hawaii and California. This patch is twice the state of Texas and three times the size of France. The other patch is the ‘Western Garbage Patch’, which is extending eastward from Japan to the Hawaiian Islands.

The Pacific Garbage Patch is the largest of the five garbage patches that are found in different parts of the world's oceans. Most of the trash found in these garbage patches is less dense than water, which means it floats on the surface of the ocean.

It makes it look like a cloudy soup and that’s because the plastic waste is spaced wide apart. The objects range in size from large debris like plastic buckets to microscopic (particles smaller than 5 millimeters). 

The garbage collected here has been swept from different parts of the world. The garbage is caught up in the current and piles up in one place.

What does research tell us?

The garbage patches were discovered in the ’90s and the scientists thought this might be the place where a lot of the plastic ended up, out there floating on the surface. But recently the researchers brought giant nets to the garbage patches and took a closer look at the objects they found.

They found toilet seats, bottle caps, toothbrushes, baskets, buckets, and hard hats. Based on this data the scientists calculated the amount of garbage that could be present in all these garbage patches. 

They found that there are a few hundred thousand tons of plastic present at the surface of the ocean.

Even though it is a huge number, a few thousand metric tons of plastic is only 1% of the estimated 800 million tons of plastic waste scientists believe is discarded in the oceans per year. 

So the scientists are left with a question, where is the rest of the ocean plastic?

On further studies, the scientists found their answer. When they took a seafloor sediment sample, they found plastic fibers in the layers that are 1 millimeter or smaller in size. These particles are microscopic, which either come from synthetic clothing fibers or the breaking down of larger plastic waste.

This microscopic plastic was found all over the oceans and even in the gut of the smallest ocean creature, like planktons. The sediment study also showed that plastic is also present in the deepest parts of the ocean. So pictures of the sea bottom were taken from a deep-sea camera.

In pictures were plastic bags as deep as 2500m below the surface of the Arctic's deep sea. It is one of over 2,100 photos taken with the camera. This suggests not all the plastic is sitting on the ocean surface.

According to Lebreton’s research, most of the plastic debris in the ocean is closer to the shores. Based on this research the scientists believe that most of the plastic debris is closer to the shore and hops on from beach to beach some sinking to the bottom whiles the rest staying close to the coastline.

What can be done to save our oceans?

Many clean-up programs are conducted by various independent and government organizations. In these programs, people voluntarily come to clean the beaches and remove the plastic waste.

The cleaning up of the deep ocean is not possible, as it will incur huge economic costs and even after that not all the plastic can be taken out of the system. To end this completely the only option for us is to prevent plastic from going into the oceans.

Written by: Priyanshu Bhardwaj

Edited by: Gourav Chowdhury