The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Good Morning America
"The Pacific Ocean has more White Trash than Texas" - Bill Maher.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine debris in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N. The patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
demon_ixsays...

"There's no proof, they're saying, that it would kill the birds"..........

Who's saying? The same "There's no proof that global warming is man made" people?

Would someone please slap some common sense into anyone that thinks that eating big chunks of plastic is good for any kind of wildlife?

raviolisays...

To me it's not clear how this garbage actually leaves the dumps and ends in the ocean. It's not just stuff left on the beach that's pulled by the waves. It's not just stuff thrown overboard by seamen. It must be transported and conveniently dumped in the ocean while no one is looking. Probably the cheapest way to get rid of garbage, and it's been going on a large scale for decades. Ships travel between Asia and America with marchandise on one way, and have to be filled with something on their return. I wonder if half of all the plastic bottles sent to China for recycling ever get there.

Please AQUAMAN!! We need you!!

HollywoodBobsays...

>> ^ravioli:
To me it's not clear how this garbage actually leaves the dumps and ends in the ocean. It's not just stuff left on the beach that's pulled by the waves. It's not just stuff thrown overboard by seamen. It must be transported and conveniently dumped in the ocean while no one is looking. Probably the cheapest way to get rid of garbage, and it's been going on a large scale for decades. Ships travel between Asia and America with marchandise on one way, and have to be filled with something on their return. I wonder if half of all the plastic bottles sent to China for recycling ever get there.
Please AQUAMAN!! We need you!!


A lot of it is litter, stuff that gets thrown on the street, that is washed into storm sewers, and then into rivers and out to the ocean. But because the plastic isn't bio-degradable it just lingers and accumulates, some of it has been out there for decades drifting in the current.

JTZsays...

As HollywoodBob said, they are washed away from streets or coastal areas. also a lot of is from the ships that traverse the Pacific ocean. Over the short 40-50 years of plastic history, all those ships that went around the Pacific ocean pretty much just dumped all the garbage they produced while traveling into the ocean, since it is a "vast" place. What people over that period failed to realize till recent;y is that the "North Pacific Subtropical Gyre" formed by all the currents around Pacific ocean have pushed all the trash into one location forming the "great garbage patch". Since the only way for these man made polymers to degrade is UV ray from the sun over a long long exposure.(No microbes can break down plastic yet) being in the water shielded most of it from UV ray making it takes even longer to photodegrade.


>> ^ravioli:
To me it's not clear how this garbage actually leaves the dumps and ends in the ocean. It's not just stuff left on the beach that's pulled by the waves. It's not just stuff thrown overboard by seamen. It must be transported and conveniently dumped in the ocean while no one is looking. Probably the cheapest way to get rid of garbage, and it's been going on a large scale for decades. Ships travel between Asia and America with marchandise on one way, and have to be filled with something on their return. I wonder if half of all the plastic bottles sent to China for recycling ever get there.
Please AQUAMAN!! We need you!!

StukaFoxsays...

"Gentlemen, while we do not yet fully know the cause of the Great Holocene Extinction Event, we do find this curious band of colored plastic all around the world in the sediments marking this time period."

blankfistsays...

In the Navy, we used to dump five gallon paint cans (filled with paint sometimes) into the ocean and told to watch out for Grean Peace. In fact, every naval ship throws (or used to throw) their garbage overboard. When we were done doing all that, we also pissed into the water to let Mother Nature know who was boss.

We also took huge recycling cargo bins filled with tons and tons of plastic meant for recycling, and we dumped it in the sea instead. Before we did that, however, we sifted through all the recyclable garbage and pulled all the plastic six pack rings and artfully tied bread crumbs to them before tossing them to the seagulls.

We also raped children and puppies. No, but some of this is true.

raviolisays...

Found this in an article from The Independant :

"About one-fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land." ...

also, "Every little piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still out there somewhere"...

Sagemindsays...

It's always been thought that the ocean was so massive that, like space, it wouldn't matter what we threw into it, it would either sink to the bottom and be invisible or the sheer vastness of the ocean would hide our garbage. The governments seem to *promote these kinds of attitudes since they don't seem to do anything about it. And lets face it. in international waters, who's going to step up and spend the money. It's the same childish attitude of "It's not our mess, it's your mess."

deadgoonsays...

I don't see why people are so friggin shocked. Where do you think the garbage of the world goes? If we're not burying it and building cities over the landfills it's being dropped in rivers, lakes and oceans.

gwiz665says...

Well, again waste in the form of military. Everything stems back to that, don't it? Cut the spending on the military and the spills will be lowered.

>> ^blankfist:
In the Navy, we used to dump five gallon paint cans (filled with paint sometimes) into the ocean and told to watch out for Grean Peace. In fact, every naval ship throws (or used to throw) their garbage overboard. When we were done doing all that, we also pissed into the water to let Mother Nature know who was boss.
We also took huge recycling cargo bins filled with tons and tons of plastic meant for recycling, and we dumped it in the sea instead. Before we did that, however, we sifted through all the recyclable garbage and pulled all the plastic six pack rings and artfully tied bread crumbs to them before tossing them to the seagulls.
We also raped children and puppies. No, but some of this is true.

Doc_Msays...

>> ^demon_ix:
"There's no proof, they're saying, that it would kill the birds"..........
Who's saying? The same "There's no proof that global warming is man made" people?
Would someone please slap some common sense into anyone that thinks that eating big chunks of plastic is good for any kind of wildlife?


You can eat plastic. It just goes through your system. No digestion occurs, so no toxins will enter your system. Of course, you could choke on it... P.S. I'm a biologist.

Anyway, this whole thing is ironic since people have been touting the values of plastic over paper for years now. Save the trees and all that. If all that trash were paper, it'd be gone long before it got out that far into the ocean. I vote: tree farms, tree farms, tree farms.

"I don't see why people are so friggin shocked. Where do you think the garbage of the world goes? If we're not burying it and building cities over the landfills it's being dropped in rivers, lakes and oceans."

We have a tremendously huge amount of space for landfills... profound amounts of space. The paranoia of the 80's about trash and landfills has been debunked as a child of media hype and activist exaggeration. In addition, we now harvest methane from landfills. When they get "full", they are buried and these fills are managed by people who aren't moronic enough to dump... say... radioactive waste or anything to unsafe that might end up in the water table. Of course, we should fullfill the 3 R's as we were taught. Reduce, reuse, recycle... but we shouldn't sacrifice our reason. Penn and Teller gave a good shake to recycling on their show. I recommend it.

cybrbeastsays...

People will not change easily, it's naive to think this will be solved by changing attitudes. We need science and technology. Bio degradable plastic is the way to go. It can be made to last a month, a year, or five years depending of the use of the plastic.
Another solution would be to genetically engineer a bacterium that's efficiently eats plastic. We'd need to make sure that it could only survive in salty water otherwise it might start eating all the land based plastic that's actually used.

Raaaghsays...

Ugh freaking eck.

one question, it doesnt biodegrade? okay, and it breaks up into little pieces? got it. Which hang around for decades? fine.

But then what happens after the decades?

Do they turn into those sea people or what?

bleedingsnowmansays...

>> ^Raaagh:
Ugh freaking eck.
one question, it doesnt biodegrade? okay, and it breaks up into little pieces? got it. Which hang around for decades? fine.
But then what happens after the decades?
Do they turn into those sea people or what?


I don't know why they said it like that, maybe because the plastic molecules stay around for so long, but a typical plastic bottle a little less than half a millennium to biodegrade.

Sagemindsays...

We remove all the oil from the ground!
We use some of the Oil.
We put some of the oil, in the form of Plastic, back into the ground and oceans for future generations.

It's like reforestation, Doing our part to ensure a future for our children's children...

griefer_queafersays...

Dying would be such a pleasurable experience if only I knew that babies weren't being born at the same time. I think its about time this shitty species check the fuck out of existence and count our losses. WHAT an embarrassment.

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