The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

In 1997, Captain Charles Moore took a short cut while crossing the Pacific Ocean on his way home from a yacht race. During his voyage, he discovered something that would change his life. Day after day, as he looked out at what should have been a clear blue sea, Moore found himself floating in an endless ocean of rainbow-coloured plastic fragments. Since his discovery, he has devoted himself to researching this environmental nightmare.

There is a large part of the Pacific Ocean, about halfway between California and Japan, that no one ever visits and only a few ever pass through. Sailors avoid it because it lacks the wind they need to sail. Fishermen know they should stay away because its lack of nutrients makes it an oceanic desert. Surprisingly, this is the largest ocean realm on our planet. It’s about the size of Africa - over 10 million square miles.

Circular ocean currents here spiral into a centre, bringing with them debris from all over the world. This includes every piece of plastic left on the beaches of the Pacific Ocean, and all the trash that washes down rivers of Asia and North America to the sea. This is where the debris stays. This is the place now referred to by oceanographers as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The problem is that it’s not a patch - it’s the size of a continent, and it’s still growing. This is because plastic doesn’t biodegrade. Instead, it photodegrades: it is broken down by sunlight into smaller and smaller pieces, but it never disappears. On some beaches of Hawaii, there are now more multi-coloured plastic particles than there are particles of sand.

On my latest voyage, we spent weeks documenting the effects of this floating plastic on the creatures that inhabit this area. Our photographers captured rare, endangered monk seals hopelessly tangled up in bits of plastic nets, and delicate, transparent jellyfish with colourful plastic fragments in their bellies that they aren’t able to digest. The stomach contents of dead albatrosses looked like a convenience store, full of toothbrushes, cigarette lighters and combs.

There is an even darker side to plastic fragment pollution. As these fragments float around in the ocean, they accumulate huge amounts of DDT and other man-made poisons. These are ingested by tiny organisms, which are then eaten by fish - fish which eventually make their way to our dinner tables.

I am often asked why we can’t vacuum up the particles. This might have been possible when the area was smaller, but today it would be more difficult than vacuuming every square inch of the entire United States. In any case, great numbers of organisms would be wiped out in the process. Only elimination of the source of the problem will result in an ocean nearly free from plastic, and the desired result will only be seen in the distant future.

The battle to change the way we produce plastics, and cut down the amount we consume, has just begun. I believe that we must fight this battle now, and we had better win if we are to survive.

(Source: Viewpoints For Bachillerato, Student’s book, Burlington Books)