Great Pacific Garbage Patch Growing

(Dive Travel Business News - March 8, 2010) -- Oceanographers report that the world's largest rubbish heap, an area of plastic debris found floating between California and Hawaii, has doubled in the past 10 years. 

The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"  has actually expanded into two connecting areas known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches with the amount of debris estimated at up to 100 million tons. 

First discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who was taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race, the patch threatens birds, marine life and humans alike. Moore warns that this toxic "plastic stew" will again double in size over the next decade unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics.

According to the UN Environment Program, the area's plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a 1,000,000 seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 mammals including whales, dolphins, turtles and seals that try to eat or drown from entanglement in the plastic. The soupy water is heavy with toxic chemicals coming from the plastic itself along with the chemicals and pesticides it has absorbed that further poison the ocean. The older plastic debris has broken down in the sunlight into plastic particles that are now suspended just below the surface   Plastic particles and contaminants are now turning up inside fish and Researchers have warned that chemicals from the patch will now work their way into the human food chain.

The island of plastic debris is floating in one of the largest and most remote ecosystems on the planet. The area, called the North Pacific Gyre, is one of five of the world's major ocean gyres.  Ocean Gyres are created by four huge systems of competing currents that swirl clockwise creating a massive vortex. The vortex draws in waste from thousands of miles away into a becalmed area at its center.  Many of the plastic items floating the North Pacific Gyre have Chinese and Japanese writing on, showing how far they have drifted.

The giant waste collection, containing everything from plastic bags to shampoo bottles, flip-flops, children's toys, tires, drink cans, Frisbees, plastic swimming pools and millions upon millions of plastic water bottles, was reported to be twice as large as Texas in 2009. More recent reports estimate it may be as large as twice the size of the Continental U.S. 

Now there are hopes of converting the floating plastic waste into fuel. Volunteers from Project Kaisei, a conservation project based in San Francisco and Hong Kong, will launch its second Expedition to the North Pacific Gyre, sending two ships to continue marine debris research, and in particular, to test an array of marine debris collection systems.   Debris collected will be used to further study the feasibility of converting this to fuel or other useable material. 

This area is so remote, there is no human activity. Doug Woodring, a member of the team, compared visiting the area to "going into outer space." As a collaborative action program, Project Kaisei is seeking sponsors, participants and leaders in their respective industries who can help to make a difference, on land, or at sea, in reducing marine debris.

Calling the patch an environmental catastrophe, Richard Pain, an Australian filmmaker, plans to cross the garbage patch in a shark cage-like giant plastic water bottle made of plastic bottles. He hopes the expedition will raise sigificant media and consumer awareness of the giant plastic garbage dump in an era of green fatigue.

Pain says that on an environmental level, the nature of the patch problem is immense and is made worse by the fact that it doesn't fall under the jurisdiction of any country and something no particular country wants to take responsibility for. Located in international waters, the patch is estimated at 2200 km long, 800 km wide to a depth of 10 metres.  However with it's accelerated growth, the patch could expand to hit landfall in the Hawaian Islands sooner than expected.

Before the advent of modern plastics, the garbage humans dumped in the ocean eventually degraded, but now, every piece of plastic manufactured in the past 50 years that made it into the ocean is still there. As a minimum, Pain wants people to stop buying single use plastics, reduce/reuse/recycle the plastic they have and cut out plastics all together where ever feasible.

** This RSS Feed is brought to you by www.DiveTravelBusinessNews.com **