![]() (“ No scientifically sound estimates exist for the size or mass,” notes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.) Nor is it a singular phenomenon: There are two separate garbage patches in the North Pacific, along with several others all around the world, including in the Sargasso Sea. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a collection of plastic, floating trash halfway between Hawaii and California, has grown to more than 600,000 square miles, a study found. Great pacific garbage patch from space Patch#The patch is such a wishy-washy phenomenon, with wishy-washy impacts, that its extent can’t be described with any certainty. You could be sailing right through the gyre, as many have observed, and never notice that you’re in the middle of a death-shaped noxious vortex. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a large collection of marine debris that can be seen floating on the ocean surface. It can’t be scanned by satellites, or scoped out on Google Earth. In fact, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was barely visible, since it comprised mostly micro-garbage. (A Russian outlet was the first to use the phrase “trash island,” according to Kim De Wolff, and that notion quickly spread.) It was quickly understood to be a solid thing-like a rubbish reef, or an island where one could moor a ship. Then came Moore’s discovery of the Garbage Patch, and all the breathless coverage that ensued. But those who cared to look found plastivores throughout the ocean ecosystem: plastic bag–consuming sea turtles, manatees that gobbled fishing lines, and fish that sucked up plastic pellets. The Laysan albatross, a large seabird native to Hawaii, seemed especially inclined to fill its gut with bottle caps and other indigestible refuse. (Verne himself posited that the garbage vortex might be a good thing, potentially serving as a source of energy, “prepared by far-seeing Nature for the moment when men shall have exhausted the mines of continents.”) Around the time of the first Earth Day and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency-both took place in 1970-researchers began to notice that animals were eating bits of plastic. Verne got his information from oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury, whose 1855 work, The Physical Geography of the Sea, described the Sargasso as “ the general receptacle of the driftwood and seaweed of the Atlantic,” while noting the existence of an analogous region of the North Pacific. But these “receptacles” didn’t seem to worry anyone until the 1970s. People knew that areas like the Sargasso, encircled by ocean currents, could serve as sinks for floating trash. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan.Sure enough, the passengers aboard the Nautilus find a graveyard of organic detritus-“products of all kinds,” Verne writes, “trunks of trees torn from the Andes or the Rocky Mountains, and floated by the Amazon or the Mississippi numerous wrecks, remains of keels, or ships’ bottoms, side planks stove in, and so weighted with shells and barnacles that they could not rise again to the surface.” Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Short answer? In turn, the plastic can hurt, starve, or suffocate the turtle. For example, loggerhead turtles consume plastic bags because they have a similar appearance to jellyfish when they are floating in the water. What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and why is it a problem?ĭebris trapped in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is harmful to marine life. It occupies a relatively stationary region of the North Pacific Ocean bounded by the North Pacific Gyre in the horse latitudes. How do we fix it then So what’s the best way to create trash-free oceans on our ocean world. The Great Pacific garbage patch formed gradually as a result of ocean or marine pollution gathered by ocean currents. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is more than twice the size of Texas. What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and how did it come to be? Now, we have got the complete detailed explanation and answer for everyone, who is interested! This is a question our experts keep getting from time to time. ![]()
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