Contrary to popular belief, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a huge island of solid debris floating in the Pacific Ocean, but rather a boundless, almost immeasurable soup of microscopic debris.

Most of this garbage comes from North America or Asia. With the help of ocean currents, debris accumulates in certain areas of the Pacific Ocean.

Several ocean currents converge in the North Pacific Current, which is a system of rotating ocean currents driven by wind and inertial forces.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is actually made up of two parts:

Great Pacific Garbage Patch Map

• the Western Pacific Garbage Patch, located near Japan;
• The Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch, which lies between the west coast of the United States and the Hawaiian Islands.

microplastic

Small plastic particles

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is made up primarily of microplastics, or microscopic plastic particles. Despite some controversy due to size, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration refers to microplastics as plastic particles less than 5 mm in diameter. They can come from a variety of sources, including cosmetics, clothing, and industrial processes.

There are currently two classifications of microplastics:

• primary microplastics are a direct result of the use of human products;
• recycled microplastics are microscopic plastic particles resulting from the breakdown of larger plastic debris, such as the macroscopic pieces that make up the bulk of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Both types are known to persist in the environment in large quantities, especially in water and.

Since plastic does not break down for many years, it becomes part of and accumulates in the tissues of many organisms. The entire cycle and movement of microplastics in the environment has not yet been studied, but research is currently underway on this issue.

What does it consist of?

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch consists of:

• Plastics: which is about 80% garbage. Plastic is cheap and one of the most common synthetic materials, and due to its durability and versatility, is popular with people as well as industry. Plastic usually cannot be broken down by living organisms, which means that when it ends up in the ocean, it remains there, degraded and broken into small pieces, but does not disappear completely. Some of the particles are extremely small - these microbeads create a lot of problems for wildlife.
• Large debris: accounting for about 20% of the garbage, mainly come from fishing operations, offshore oil rigs or spills from ships.
• Sunken debris. Recently, oceanographers have calculated that up to 70% of marine debris is not on the surface, but at the bottom of the ocean.

Environmental impact

The impact of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is massive and catastrophic. Marine wildlife is the most affected by negative impacts. A few examples include:

• Sea turtles mistakenly prey on plastic bags, mistaking them for jellyfish or other marine prey.
• Albatrosses and other seabirds that accidentally eat bits of plastic die from starvation and dehydration.
• Seals and other marine mammals are often caught in abandoned fishing nets.
• Filter feeders consume plastic particles instead of regular plankton or fish eggs.

Floating plastic can also prevent sunlight from reaching plankton or algae, the microscopic organisms that are found at the base of all marine life. If the amount of plankton decreases, the animals that eat it, such as turtles or fish, will also decrease in number. The decline in turtle and fish populations will affect the abundance of top predators such as sharks and whales.

Impact on human life:

• If marine food webs are disrupted, fish and other seafood will become less available to humans or more expensive.
• Plastic contains chemicals such as bisphenol A that cause environmental and human health problems. PCBs are known to be found in plastic and can accumulate to toxic levels in marine ecosystems and in people who eat seafood.

Possible solutions to the problem

Scientists have studied the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and found several effective solutions to clean up the ocean. However, the main problem is that this polluted area is quite large and far from the coast, so no country in the world has started cleaning it up. The Pacific Ocean is too deep to reach the bottom, and the nets are too small to catch debris, and marine life can unintentionally fall into them. Scientists agree that the best solution to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is to reduce the use of plastic and encourage the use of biodegradable and reusable materials.

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Clogging of water bodies with human waste is one of the topical problems of our time. Some of the garbage decomposes over time, but a considerable amount of it settles to the bottom or remains floating on the water surface, causing enormous damage to the environment.

Huge accumulations of garbage, resembling islands or even entire continents in size, are often found in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans. Researchers of this phenomenon compare it with "garbage soup": part of the waste does not sink, but floats on the surface or in the water column - and such "spots" of garbage stretch for many kilometers.

Where does such a large amount of human waste come from in the ocean?

First of all, this is what is thrown into the water by residents and guests of cities located in close proximity to the seas.

For example, environmentalists call India, Thailand and China the leaders in water pollutants with garbage, where the discharge of everything unnecessary into rivers and seas is considered practically the norm.

Especially actively and thoughtlessly, tourists usually litter, vacationing on the warm sea coasts of the whole world. From them, cigarette butts, plastic bottles and cans from various drinks, glasses, corks, plastic bags, disposable tableware, cocktail tubes and other household waste fall into the water.

But that's not all. Let's remember school lessons. Rivers flow into the seas, the seas are part of the ocean waters, which make up more than 95% of the entire water shell of the Earth - the hydrosphere. Thus, most of the garbage thrown into the rivers, carried by the current, will also end up in the ocean.

According to scientists, about 80% of the volume of this giant water dump comes from the "land". And only the remaining 20% ​​are the waste of "marine" human activities:

• broken fishing nets;
• waste from floating oil drilling rigs;
• garbage thrown from ships, etc.

All this rubbish that enters the ocean goes with the flow and, finally, accumulates in certain places of "calm", where it forms whole "floating dumps" on the waves.

Pacific Garbage

The world's largest water dump is located in the North Pacific Ocean. It is there that ocean currents form a kind of funnel where garbage is pulled together.

The result is a real "dead sea" of rotting waste, marine flora, corpses of aquatic life, shipwrecks. And since the middle of the twentieth century, the floating remains of plastic, which naturally decomposes over several hundred years, began to accumulate here rapidly.

The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", "Pacific Garbage Island", "Garbage Iceberg" - as soon as they do not call in the media this huge accumulation of floating waste and garbage, located between Hawaii and California.

The exact dimensions are still unknown. According to rough estimates, its weight can be more than 3.5 million tons, with an area occupied by 10 or more million square kilometers.

According to the structure, the "garbage iceberg" is divided into two large parts - Western (closer to the shores of Japan and China) and Eastern (not far from California and Hawaii).

Pacific Garbage Island Facts:

1. Even before the actual discovery, its existence was announced in 1988 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Such conclusions were made by scientists based on observations of the oceans, the movement of accumulations of waste in them, as well as the nature of the currents.
2. Officially, the “garbage bin” was opened in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore: traveling on a yacht, he found himself in a part of the body of water covered for many miles with debris floating on the surface. The discovery impressed Moore so much that he wrote several articles about it, which attracted the attention of the whole world to the problem. Subsequently, he became the founder of an environmental organization for the study of the oceans.
3. About 70% of waste sinks, so the so-called "garbage soup", which occupies a huge area on the surface of the water, is only one third of the total volume of the "world's water dump".
4. More than a million seabirds and aquatic mammals die each year from plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean.
5. There are forecasts that promise a doubling of the scale of the "continent of waste" in just a decade, if humanity does not reduce the volume of consumed (and discarded) plastic products.

The production of plastic products in the world is still growing steadily every year. Accordingly, an increasing amount of it ends up in natural reservoirs.

For more details on the Pacific Garbage, see the video materials:

Danger and consequences of pollution of ocean waters

The damage that garbage islands cause to the environment, and, as a result, to the life and health of the people themselves, is simply enormous:

1. In vast areas of the ocean, sunlight does not penetrate through the water column polluted with waste. As a result, algae and plankton die in these areas, which in turn are food for the inhabitants of the depths. Lack of nutrition can lead to their extinction and further complete disappearance.
2. The main volume of garbage is all kinds of plastics. The period of its complete natural decomposition in the natural environment, according to environmentalists, can be from 100 to 500 years. That is, at the moment, all this mass does not decrease, but only increases due to daily new receipts.
3. Under the influence of the sun, plastic gradually breaks down into small granules that are able to absorb toxins from the environment, turning into a real poison.
4. Plastic particles are eaten by animals. This is because its pieces are overgrown with algae, and small granules look like eggs and the same plankton. Often eaten by birds and fish, plastic becomes the cause of their death. Even if the animal survives, in any case it receives chronic poisoning with harmful substances that cause diseases and mutations.
5. Waste that covers the bottom of the oceans destroys the habitat of the inhabitants of the deep.

The laws of the food chain are inexorable and fair: as a result, plastic poisons inevitably affect commercial fish species, and through them harm human health.

Note! Ocean Trash Facts:

• scientists believe that by 2050 plastic will be eaten by almost all birds and marine life without exception;
• about 40% of albatrosses die precisely because of the pecking of plastic as food;
• about 9% of fish have plastic residues in their stomachs, and according to scientists, in general, fish eat up to 20 tons of polymer waste per year.

If you combine all the "garbage patches" into one, you get an area larger than the size of the United States of America. And while every year this "water dump" only expands its boundaries.

How to deal with the problem?

It would seem obvious that the problem of waste in the seas and oceans needs to be solved by the whole world and as soon as possible! But so far, no one has really done it. Garbage accumulates in neutral waters, and none of the countries wants to take responsibility, and most importantly, bear the financial costs associated with solving this problem.

But it is worth noting that these expenses are unlikely to be within the power of the budget of one, even a developed, country - the amount of garbage accumulated in the oceans is too large.

The solution proposed by ecologists sounds, albeit categorically, but reasonable. In their opinion, humanity as a whole needs, if not to completely abandon plastic and polyethylene, then at least reduce its production and consumption to the bare minimum.

Also a serious step in solving the problem is the need for environmentally friendly recycling of plastic waste.

Important! Of course, each of us individually is not able to solve the problem of plastic pollution of the earth in full, but each of us is able to make his personal contribution to the protection of natural resources:

• reduce the amount of plastic and polyethylene used, giving preference to containers and packaging made from natural materials: cloth and paper bags and bags, wooden and cardboard boxes, etc.;
• in no case should you throw objects from any type of plastic into water, on the ground or even in the general mass of garbage, but store them in special containers marked “for plastic” or take them to recycling centers for further processing and disposal.

Will people heed the calls of environmentalists, or is humanity destined to perish from the waste of its own life, its own frivolity? So far, the problem of "garbage spots" in the water expanses of the Earth remains as acute as it was five and ten years ago. Separate attempts by enthusiasts to cope with the garbage in the ocean are just a drop in the ocean, huge funds and significant forces are needed to solve this problem.

Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Pacific Trash Vortex, North Pacific Gyre, Pacific Garbage Island, whatever the name of this giant garbage island that growing at a gigantic pace. The garbage island has been talked about for more than half a century, but little action has been taken. Meanwhile, irreparable damage is being done to the environment, and entire species of animals are dying out. There is a high probability that the moment will come when nothing can be fixed. So, read more about the problem of ocean pollution below

Pollution has been around since the invention of plastic. On the one hand, an irreplaceable thing that has made life incredibly easier for people. She made it easier until the plastic product was thrown away: plastic decomposes for more than a hundred years, and thanks to ocean currents it gets lost in huge islands. One such island, larger than the US state of Texas, floats between California, Hawaii, and Alaska—millions of tons of garbage. The island is growing rapidly, with ~2.5 million pieces of plastic and other debris dumped into the ocean every day from all continents. Slowly decomposing, plastic causes serious harm to the environment. Birds, fish (and other ocean dwellers) suffer the most. Plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean kills more than a million seabirds a year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, lighters and toothbrushes are found in the stomachs of dead seabirds - birds swallow all these items, mistaking them for food.

"Garbage Island"has been growing rapidly since about the 1950s due to the peculiarities of the North Pacific current system, the center of which, where all the garbage enters, is relatively stationary. According to scientists, at present, the mass of the garbage island is more than three and a half million tons, and the area - more than a million square kilometers. "Island" has a number of unofficial names: "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", "Eastern Garbage Patch", "Pacific Trash Vortex", etc. In Russian, it is sometimes also called “garbage iceberg.” In 2001, the mass of plastic exceeded the mass of zooplankton in the area of ​​the island by six times.

This huge pile of floating garbage - in fact, the largest dumping ground on the planet - is held in one place by the influence of undercurrents that have turbulence. The "soup" strip stretches from a point about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California across the North Pacific past Hawaii and narrowly misses distant Japan.

The American oceanologist Charles Moore, the discoverer of this "great Pacific garbage patch", also known as the "garbage cycle", believes that about 100 million tons of floating rubbish are circling in this region. Markus Eriksen, director of science at Algalita Marine Research Foundation (USA), founded by Moore, said yesterday: "Initially, people assumed that this is an island of plastic debris that you can almost walk on. This representation is inaccurate. The consistency of the stain is very similar to soup made of plastic. It is simply endless - perhaps twice the size of the continental United States."

The history of the discovery of the garbage patch by Moore is quite interesting:
14 years ago, young playboy and yachtsman Charles Moore, the son of a wealthy chemical magnate, decided to take a vacation in the Hawaiian Islands after a session at the University of California. At the same time, Charles decided to try out his new yacht in the ocean. To save time, I swam straight ahead. A few days later, Charles realized that he swam into the trash.

“During the week, whenever I went on deck, some plastic junk floated by,” Moore wrote in his book Plastics are Forever? - I could not believe my eyes: how could we pollute such a huge water area? I had to swim through this garbage dump day after day, and there was no end in sight ... "

Swimming through tons of household waste turned Moore's life upside down. He sold all his shares and, with the proceeds, founded the environmental organization Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF), which began to study the ecological state of the Pacific Ocean. His reports and warnings were often brushed aside and not taken seriously. Probably, a similar fate would have awaited the current AMRF report, but here nature itself helped environmentalists - January storms threw more than 70 tons of plastic garbage onto the beaches of the islands of Kauai and Niihau.

They say that the son of the famous French oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, who went to Hawaii to shoot a new film, almost got a heart attack at the sight of these mountains of garbage. However, plastic not only ruined the lives of vacationers, but also led to the death of some birds and sea turtles. Since then, the name Moore has not left the pages of the American media. Last week, the founder of AMRF warned that if consumers do not limit the use of plastic that is not recycled, in the next 10 years the surface area of ​​"junk soup" will double and become a threat not only to Hawaii, but to all countries of the Pacific Rim.

But in general, they try to “not notice” the problem. After all, the landfill does not look like an ordinary island, in its consistency it resembles a “soup” - fragments of plastic float in water at a depth of one to a hundred meters. In addition, more than 70 percent of all plastic that enters here sinks into the bottom layers, so we can’t even imagine exactly how much rubbish can accumulate there. Since the plastic is transparent and lies directly under the surface of the water, the “polyethylene sea” cannot be seen from the satellite. Garbage can only be seen from the bow of the ship or diving into the water with scuba gear. But ships don't come to this area often, because since the days of the sailing fleet, all ship captains have laid routes away from this part of the Pacific Ocean, known for never having a wind. In addition, the North Pacific whirlpool is neutral waters, and all the garbage that floats here is nobody's.

Oceanologist Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a leading authority on floating debris, has been monitoring the accumulation of plastic in the oceans for more than 15 years. He compares the garbage cycle with a living being: "It moves around the planet like a large animal off a leash." When this animal approaches land - and in the case of the Hawaiian archipelago this is the case - the results are quite dramatic. "When a garbage patch burps, the whole beach is covered in this plastic confetti," says Ebbesmeyer.

According to Eriksen, the slowly circulating mass of water, rife with garbage, creates a danger to human health as well. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic granules - the raw material of the plastics industry - are lost every year and eventually end up in the sea. They pollute the environment by acting like chemical sponges that attract man-made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. Then this dirt enters the stomachs along with food. "What goes into the ocean ends up in the stomachs of the ocean dwellers, and then on your plate. It's very simple"

The main ocean pollutants are China and India. It is considered in the order of things to throw garbage directly into a nearby body of water. Below is a photo that does not make sense to comment..

A powerful North Pacific subtropical whirlpool is located here, formed at the meeting point of the Kuroshio current, the northern trade wind currents and the intertrade countercurrents. The North Pacific whirlpool is a kind of desert in the oceans, where the most diverse rubbish has been carried for centuries from all over the world - algae, animal corpses, wood, shipwrecks. This is a real dead sea. Due to the abundance of rotting mass, the water in this area is saturated with hydrogen sulfide, so the North Pacific whirlpool is extremely poor in life - there are no large commercial fish, mammals, or birds. No one but zooplankton colonies. Therefore, fishing vessels do not come here either, even military and merchant ships try to bypass this place, where high atmospheric pressure and fetid calm almost always reign.

Since the beginning of the 50s of the last century, plastic bags, bottles and packaging have been added to rotting algae, which, unlike algae and other organic matter, are poorly biodegradable and do not go anywhere. Today, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is 90 percent plastic, with a total mass six times that of natural plankton. Today, the area of ​​all garbage patches exceeds even the territory of the United States! Every 10 years, the area of ​​this colossal landfill increases by an order of magnitude.

"Pacific Garbage Island" is the official name for humanity's dirtiest heritage.

This problem has been talked about for more than 50 years, but the alarm was really raised only in the early 2000s. Because a new continent has appeared on the planet ... from garbage.

It all started with the invention of plastic. In everyday life and production, this is an indispensable thing, but like everywhere else, there are “buts”. Plastic is so cheap and readily available that people don't hesitate to get rid of it in exchange for a new one. All the garbage ended up in the ocean, where the main currents knocked plastic waste into garbage islands (oh yes! he is not alone). And this has been going on for over 60 years. And since the decay period of plastic products is more than 100 years, we can estimate the extent of the damage. For example, between the state of California, Hawaii and Alaska, an island of millions of tons of garbage floats, the size of Ukraine and the Black Sea.

Now it is far from surprising to hear how ornithologists talk about syringes, lighters, toothbrushes found in dead birds, because. they take garbage for food.

According to rough estimates of scientists, at the moment the mass of garbage islands is more than 4 million (!) Tons of garbage. And Charles Moore, in fact, the discoverer of the garbage island, believes that more than 100 million tons of rubbish floats in the Pacific Ocean.

For the most part, they try to ignore the landfill, because it does not look like an ordinary island, rather it resembles a plastic soup that “hung” in water at a depth of one to a hundred meters. Moreover, 60% of the garbage is in the bottom layers, so it is almost impossible to imagine exactly how much rubbish the ocean can store.

A funny (or not so?) story about the Sargasso Sea (Bermuda Triangle). In the 17th century, corsairs, pirates and just settlers to the new world frightened each other with fables about an island from the bodies of dead sailors, masts and wreckage of dead ships. At the moment, masts and debris have been replaced by plastic bottles, bags and other rubbish. Nothing changes, only now it's not just a fable. These are the islands of death in the ocean. Due to the decay of plastic waste, the level of hydrogen sulfide rolls over - which excludes the possibility of habitat for mammals, birds and large fish. And in addition, hydrogen sulfide emits such a stench that even the military during maneuvers prefer to sail in a roundabout way.