Call it the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Vortex, it is much larger and more alarming than scientists suspected.
The patch has been known for years. It is a concentration of man made garbage, mainly plastics, approximately 1000 miles off the California. coast. The vast majority of the debris, which can vary in size from abandoned fishing nets to microscopic pellets, is invisible, floating at or just below the surface.
Between 1985 and 1988, several Alaskan researchers measured neustronic plastic, which is plastic floating at or near the surface, in the North Pacific. Their results, presented in a 1988 paper by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, predicted the existence of a high concentration of plastics in the North Pacific Gyre, a region where currents converge. In 1997, Charles Moore, a sea captain and researcher, discovered the patch while returning from a trans Pacific sailing race. He reported his find to Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer, who named it the Eastern Garbage Patch.
An estimated 80% of the trash comes from land, and 20% from ships. The debris takes around five years to get to the gyre from North America, and a year or less from Asia.
The plastic doesn't biodegrade, but it does photodegrade, that is get broken down by light. The photodegration results in smaller and smaller pieces of plastic, all the way down to the molecular level.
The smaller the pieces get, the more dangerous they are to marine organisms. When they get small enough to be ingested, they are mistaken for a sex hormone by the creatures' endocrine systems, causing a hormonal imbalance. The plastic can also pick up PCBs, DDT and other organic pollutants. One researcher has found that the photodegration releases these toxins. The plastics can carry invasive species, such as barnacles and mussels, from one region to another, causing ecological disruptions.
A paper by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said that an estimated 100,000 marine mammals are killed by the trash annually.
A team of researchers sponsored by the University of California, and including scientists from La Jolla California's Scripps Oceanographic Institute, have just returned from the patch. In a San Diego press conference, they announced that the patch is larger than they expected, as large as Texas. The team brought back samples, hoping to learn more about the patch's impact.
There is another gyre in the South Pacific, which the scientists say is four times the size of the North Pacific gyre. "We're afraid of what we're going to find in the South Gyre," said the Scripps director, "but we've got to go there."
The Environmental Cleanup Coalition was formed to work with other groups to address the challenge of cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
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