Thread: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The swirling mass of plastic soup in the Pacific Ocean, known by a handful of names -- the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, North Pacific Gyre, Trash Vortex, and Plastic Graveyard among them -- has been gaining notoriety lately, for all the wrong reasons. It's ballooned to twice the size of the continental U.S., causing a variety of problems, but what does it really look like out there? This satellite photo is just the beginning; get up close and personal with the patch in the rest of the slideshow.
Photo credit: BuffaloReadings.com

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch : TreeHugger

Not one post in over 24 hours!!! I guess it just goes to show how environmentally concerned almost all Teakdoor members are.

Hey I just saw this..I don't live on here ya know !!

I actually saw some of this yesterday on Yahoo

at JJ Market by a group of young people about plastic waste. I told them that it was and is a huge problem for Thailand and globally. We all ought to be damn concerned and care about this.
First I have seen this.

Originally Posted by EssEffBee

Not one post in over 24 hours!!! I guess it just goes to show how environmentally concerned almost all Teakdoor members are.

The read count is quite high. I read it and had really no idea what to say, just like you.

I hope we educate our grandchildren to solve these man made problems

Scripps plays role in national research of sea trash
Lily Leung
Wednesday, November 3, 2010


Peggy Peattie
Union-Tribune staff

Scripps scientists preparing to journey into the vast and little-explored "garbage patch" of the north Pacific Ocean in summer 2009.

Researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla will count plastic particles that were collected during an October voyage by scientists studying the impact of debris on marine creatures and humans.

Those on the expedition - sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - found the plastic and other items in the "great Pacific garbage patch." The Texas-sized mass of floating objects in north Pacific Ocean has attracted interest from researchers worldwide, including some in Indonesia who joined the NOAA voyage.

Scientists from Scripps, based at the University of California San Diego, have done their own research on the vortex of plastic and have talked about plans to search for plastic in the South Pacific Ocean. The northern gyre has included everything from detergent bottles to toothbrushes, though most of the items are microscopic.

Besides plastic, scientists on the October trip collected samples of plankton, small organisms that may have consumed plastic bits. The effort was intended to fill gaps in data from parts of the Pacific Ocean, such as the stretch between Guam and Hawaii.

"We need samples in these areas to better describe the diversity and distribution of plankton, so we may detect changes and better understand the plankton communities," said Michael Ford, a chief NOAA scientist.

After Scripps tallies the plastic pieces, NOAA scientists in Seattle will test them for chemicals such as the pesticide DDT and BPA, a substance used to make plastics. Both are considered harmful to living organisms.

This month, another group of researchers will embark on a separate journey that also will involve plastic pollution in the ocean.

Experts from the Santa Monica-based 5 Gyres Institute will sail from Rio de Janeiro to Cape Town, South Africa, to show "you can't cross an ocean today without finding plastic pollution," said Anna Cummins, an institute co-founder.

Members of that team also hope to study whether the plastic poses harm to marine life.

signonsandiego.com

Great Garbage Patch' in the Pacific Ocean not so great claim scientists
Environmental scientists have been criticised for exaggerating the size of an "island" of plastic waste said to be swirling around in the Pacific Ocean after a study finds that it is 200 times smaller than claimed.

One popular claim is that the size of the patch is twice that of the state of Texas - half a million square miles or the equivalent of 20 times the size of England

Claims that the "Great Garbage Patch" between California and Japan is twice the size of Texas is "grossly exaggerated" said the research which reckons it is more like one per cent the size.
Further reports that the oceans are filled with more plastic than plankton, and that the patch has been growing tenfold each decade since the 1950s are equally misleading, the new research claimed.
In reality it often cannot even be seen from the deck of a passing boat, said the latest analysts from the Oregon State University professor of oceanography Angelicque White.
The scientist took part in a recent marine expedition to examine the mass of plastic that is floating in the ocean and found there was a problem.
But genuine scientific concerns are undermined by scare tactics from those proclaiming the trash patch is so big that there is more plastic than plankton in the Pacific.

Prof White said: "There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world's oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists.
"We have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates. We don't need the hyperbole.
"Given the observed concentration of plastic in the North Pacific, it is simply inaccurate to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have observed an exponential increase in plastic."
One popular claim is that the size of the patch is twice that of the state of Texas – half a million square miles or the equivalent of 20 times the size of England.
But while the plastic stretches across the surface, its mass compared to the amount of water means it only takes up a tiny fraction of its proclaimed area, said Prof White.
"The amount of plastic out there isn't trivial," she said.
"But the patch ... is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size."
Prof White said plastic can be toxic to some marine life forms but it can absorb other toxins – there is evidence that some organisms are breeding on tiny plastic debris.
However, it is also a danger to seabirds and fish and she said: "Plastic clearly does not belong in the ocean."
Getting rid of it is too expensive and could damage the fragile ecology under the ocean, she said. Preventing more from entering the water should now be the main focus instead.
She added: "If there is a takeaway message, it's that we should consider it good news that the 'garbage patch' doesn't seem to be as bad as advertised.
"Since it would be prohibitively costly to remove the plastic, we need to focus our efforts on preventing more trash from fouling our oceans in the first place."
Recent research by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that the amount of plastic, at least in the Atlantic Ocean, hasn't increased since the mid-1980s – despite greater production and consumption of materials made from plastic, she pointed out.'Great Garbage Patch' in the Pacific Ocean not so great claim scientists - Telegraph

Originally Posted by crippen

In reality it often cannot even be seen from the deck of a passing boat,

Originally Posted by crippen

Getting rid of it is too expensive

This myth about a great mass of garbage in the ocean has been perpetuating for years, and scienticists are quite correctly sceptical, there is no real evidence. Am I wrong in saying the land masses in that picture are North and Sounth America? If so the swirling mass is located on the eastern side of the American continent in the Indian Ocean? Someone needs a geography lesson. Swirling clouds? Like a cyclone or low pressure system? No disagreement that we need to do something about the waste that we produce...........

[quote=Mid;1652827]

Originally Posted by crippen

In reality it often cannot even be seen from the deck of a passing boat,

Originally Posted by crippen

Getting rid of it is too expensive

I would chose other parts of that post for picking.

Originally Posted by crippen

But genuine scientific concerns are undermined by scare tactics from those proclaiming the trash patch is so big that there is more plastic than plankton in the Pacific.

Prof White said: "There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world's oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists.

Originally Posted by crippen

Preventing more from entering the water should now be the main focus instead.

I agree particularly with the last one.

Originally Posted by Mid

NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - Monitoring & Understanding Our Changing Planet

SEAPLEX

SEAPLEX

http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeano...6/welcome.html

Adult Programs

None of which helps to explain why the picture highlights an area in the wrong ocean.

No environmental cause is helped by alarmist accounts with bad factual information.

Originally Posted by Bazzy

None of which helps to explain why the picture highlights an area in the wrong ocean.

that's true , also true is that is not what you were asking

Originally Posted by Bazzy

No environmental cause is helped by alarmist accounts with bad factual information.

agreed , disagree that this is enough to write off the problem .

Depressing. We are all culprits. The less people on the planet the better. Reducing the world's population to a quarter of what it is now would do wonders for the rest of the natural world.

Originally Posted by Bazzy

Am I wrong in saying the land masses in that picture are North and Sounth America? If so the swirling mass is located on the eastern side of the American continent in the Indian Ocean? Someone needs a geography lesson.

Yes, someone needs a geography lesson to be certain.

i worked as a summer beach cleaner in north wales,we used to fill a toyota pick up two or three times a day.the stuff we used to find was an eye opener.the rubbish came from all over the world.in a strech of beach 2 miles long we were removing about 10 tons of rubbish a week.

I saw a documentary on this subject a few months ago, and apparently albatrosses are feeding their chicks with pieces of plastic, which remain in the stomach and eventually prevent the chicks eating food, thus causing starvation.

We clearly need to teach the adult albatrosses the difference between a piece of plastic and a fish. You'd think, wouldn't you.......

Actual Thorm there's no hope so we should just create edible plastic. The world is fcked. It's all a big unchangeable joke to most people. Nothing is wrong so long as humans are not directly injured or killed by doing it. We can kill the world so long as no humans are hurt in the process. So go out there and enjoy littering and destroying the nature around you.

So many people seem to be being coached by the media to feel all this emotion about a problem that is so big and complicated that they feel powerless to know what to do... which is precisely what the media's for... to wind you up, and keep you worrying.

The whole tone of the language is daft... as if we mus feel there is a moral outrage being committed by our self-loathing selves upon an morally outraged sinless throng of other species... this kind of perspective is totally unjustified... species come, species go; environments come, environments go; chemical compounds that form stars, planets, atmospheres, and living systems come and go... but the whole rhetoric implies that there's some extra moral dimension to this... which is why it comes across as being just like a religion.

I guess it's a sort of collectivised guilt trip on a receptive middle-class audience... I mean, as if you honestly really think or care about generations of humans in 500 years from now.

The world isn't being "killed", it's not a person, with feelings, and favourite flavour pizza, or quirky aunt, it's just a lump of chemical compounds held together by physical forces, that has changed many times over before.

Do you weep for the innocent dinosaurs and trilobites whose world you stole?
Do you mourn for the innocent blades of grass you torture, maim, and murder every time you mow the lawn?
What about all the future species' that have yet to exist?! Who thrive on digesting plastic and would be poisoned by the current atmosphere! You're in the way! using up their planet! You selfish human!

Basically, you assume that nature has to be green trees, flowers, and fluffy kittens, coral reefs, manta rays, and humpback whales, but none of these things are permanent... they are in constant flux... they (and we) are still evolving... adapting to an environment that will always change... and there is no morally right or wrong environment... they just exist independent of morality, as do the organisms within them, and if it changes, and the things die or change, that's normal.

So it's actually the other way round... by "polluting the earth" we're not actually killing the earth - we're helping it... by poisoning the environment for our own species, so that we die out quicker, and something else can replace us.

So really, if you think humans are the problem, then the solution is to increase the amount of litter and pollution and indulge in as much disease-risky activity, and breed as much as possible to contribute to our extinction!
The world will carry on, as it always has, with or without us... until the Sun explodes and melts it in about 5 billion years' time - who's a naughty star then!


...apart from that, yeah it is a big ugly mess (from a human POV), just like the orbital debris... the only thing that will precipitate any change is financial carrots and sticks... you could get all IMO nations to cough up for a clean-up fleet to wander the oceans scraping the crap up and burning it to recoup a little energy perhaps... but the real problem is that most of the world's population is in coastal developing world towns and cities with limited rule of law and education, and the sum total of all the crap they chuck out is epic... to target manufacturers through international treaties... all comes down to money and is undone by corruption/rule of law...

...so the answer is science:

Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag in Three Months
By Brandon Keim May 23, 2008 | 1:08 pm | Categories: Environment


Plastic takes thousands of years to decompose — but 16-year-old science fair contestant Daniel Burd made it happen in just three months.

4,560
digg

The Waterloo, Ontario high school junior figured that something must make plastic degrade, even if it does take millennia, and that something was probably bacteria.

(Hey, at between one-half and 90 percent of Earth’s biomass, bacteria’s a pretty safe bet for any biological mystery.)

The Record reports that Burd mixed landfill dirt with yeast and tap water, then added ground plastic and let it stew. The plastic indeed decomposed more quickly than it would in nature; after experimenting with different temperatures and configurations, Burd isolated the microbial munchers. One came from the bacterial genus Pseudomonas, and the other from the genus Sphingomonas.


Burd says this should be easy on an industrial scale: all that’s needed is a fermenter, a growth medium and plastic, and the bacteria themselves provide most of the energy by producing heat as they eat.
The only waste is water and a bit of carbon dioxide.

Amazing stuff. I’ll try to get an interview with this young man who may have managed to solve one of the most intractable environmental dilemmas of our time. And I can’t help but wonder whether his high school already had its prom. If he doesn’t get to be king, there’s no justice in this world.

Teen Decomposes Plastic Bag in Three Months | Wired Science | Wired.com

Biotech, Nanotech, and Energy Science hold the answers, not Environmentianity.

Originally Posted by Bower

I hope we educate our grandchildren to solve these man made problems

Originally Posted by crippen

Great Garbage Patch' in the Pacific Ocean not so great claim scientists
Environmental scientists have been criticised for exaggerating the size of an "island" of plastic waste said to be swirling around in the Pacific Ocean after a study finds that it is 200 times smaller than claimed.

One popular claim is that the size of the patch is twice that of the state of Texas - half a million square miles or the equivalent of 20 times the size of England

Claims that the "Great Garbage Patch" between California and Japan is twice the size of Texas is "grossly exaggerated" said the research which reckons it is more like one per cent the size.
Further reports that the oceans are filled with more plastic than plankton, and that the patch has been growing tenfold each decade since the 1950s are equally misleading, the new research claimed.
In reality it often cannot even be seen from the deck of a passing boat, said the latest analysts from the Oregon State University professor of oceanography Angelicque White.
The scientist took part in a recent marine expedition to examine the mass of plastic that is floating in the ocean and found there was a problem.
But genuine scientific concerns are undermined by scare tactics from those proclaiming the trash patch is so big that there is more plastic than plankton in the Pacific.

Prof White said: "There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the world's oceans is troubling, but this kind of exaggeration undermines the credibility of scientists.
"We have data that allow us to make reasonable estimates. We don't need the hyperbole.
"Given the observed concentration of plastic in the North Pacific, it is simply inaccurate to state that plastic outweighs plankton, or that we have observed an exponential increase in plastic."
One popular claim is that the size of the patch is twice that of the state of Texas – half a million square miles or the equivalent of 20 times the size of England.
But while the plastic stretches across the surface, its mass compared to the amount of water means it only takes up a tiny fraction of its proclaimed area, said Prof White.
"The amount of plastic out there isn't trivial," she said.
"But the patch ... is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size."
Prof White said plastic can be toxic to some marine life forms but it can absorb other toxins – there is evidence that some organisms are breeding on tiny plastic debris.
However, it is also a danger to seabirds and fish and she said: "Plastic clearly does not belong in the ocean."
Getting rid of it is too expensive and could damage the fragile ecology under the ocean, she said. Preventing more from entering the water should now be the main focus instead.
She added: "If there is a takeaway message, it's that we should consider it good news that the 'garbage patch' doesn't seem to be as bad as advertised.
"Since it would be prohibitively costly to remove the plastic, we need to focus our efforts on preventing more trash from fouling our oceans in the first place."
Recent research by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution found that the amount of plastic, at least in the Atlantic Ocean, hasn't increased since the mid-1980s – despite greater production and consumption of materials made from plastic, she pointed out.'Great Garbage Patch' in the Pacific Ocean not so great claim scientists - Telegraph

Thanks for that.

Originally Posted by PaulBunyon

Depressing. We are all culprits. The less people on the planet the better. Reducing the world's population to a quarter of what it is now would do wonders for the rest of the natural world.

No worries. Nature has a selective manner in which to take care of the negative manner. In time, she weeds out the few.