The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris that is located in the North Pacific Ocean region. The question that arises is that what in the world is marine debris? Marine debris is trash that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large water bodies.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a blob that is floating halfway between California and Hawaii. It spans in between the waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan.Shockingly, it is twice the size of Texas. The patch includes about 1.8 trillion pieces of trash and weighs about 88,000 tons. It is the equivalent of 500 jumbo jets.
Scientists and researchers had been aware of the growing problem of plastic debris and microplastics in the world’s oceans since the late 1980s. However, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch came to public attention only after the year 1997.
The amount of debris in The Great Pacific Garbage Patch keeps on accumulating and growing in size because much of it is plastic that is not biodegradable. Most items made from plastic material, for instance, do not wear down. They simply keep on breaking into tinier and tinier pieces.
Many people visualize The Great Pacific Garbage Patch as an island of trash floating in the middle of the ocean. However, in reality these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics.
Microplastics can’t always be seen by the naked eye. Interestingly even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage floating in the midst of nowhere. The microplastics of The Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup of mush.
Oceanographers, researchers and ecologists have recently discovered that about 70 percent of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean all the way to the ocean floor. About 80 percent of plastic floating in the ocean is estimated to originate from land-based sources, with the remaining 20 percent coming from boats and other marine sources. The dimensions and depth of the patch are continuously changing.
While many different types of trash enter the ocean, plastics make up the majority of marine debris for two reasons. First, plastic’s durability, low cost, and malleability mean that it’s being used in more and more consumer and industrial products.
Almost all of the trash in the infamous Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from countries located around the Pacific Rim.
There are two schools of thought. While many scientists say it is really great that people are trying to clean up the patch. However, others say most of the efforts should instead go towards stopping the flow of plastic garbage into the ocean that is out of everyone's control.
Ocean microplastics and other items that shouldn't supposedly be found in water bodies have lasting side effects on the ocean. Fishes and another marine life mistake these pieces to be their food and end up consuming them. It ends up potentially cutting down their digestive tracts or ends up completely filling up their stomachs so there is no room for real food.
This allows chemicals and particles to enter the organism and in the end contaminate and harm it. From the tiniest plankton to the largest whales, plastics affect nearly 700 species in the ocean. It is literally wiping out populations of valued marine life.
Garbage that reaches the Great Pacific Garbage Patch from the west coast of the United States and from the east coast of Japan is carried by currents. It includes the California Current, the North Equatorial Current, the North Pacific Current, and the Kuroshio into the North Pacific subtropical gyre. It takes several years for the debris to travel all the way from the coasts to the gyre.
The troubling factor is that there's so much plastic waste floating in the pacific ocean, but governments have chosen to ignore it just because it floats on international territory.
Since countries have a collective responsibility of helping other countries facing a crisis, LADbible and the Plastic Ocean Foundation teamed up to get the garbage patch to be recognised as a real country by the UN. they even got Gal Gadot, Pharrell Williams, Sir David Attenborough and even Jason Momoa to become citizens of this “country”.
Written by: Varima Tandon
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