We’ve already got a massive trash island, the size of Texas (and growing), known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Isn’t that enough? Well apparently we like the idea of a floating patch of garbage so much that we’ve actually gone and created five massive patches of plastic trash.
They’re known as the five gyres because each patch has accumulated in a major ocean gyre; a convergence of ocean currents and wind that cause the water to rotate in place. The gyres are: North Atlantic Gyre, South Atlantic Gyre, Indian Ocean Gyre, North Pacific Gyre, and South Pacific Gyre. Not to be outdone by the ‘Great Pacific’ in the North Pacific, each of these ocean phenoms has a massive garbage patch to call its own.
The North Atlantic patch has gathered in the Sargasso Sea, a unique part of the Bermuda Triangle and one of the strangest seas on the planet. Bounded only by strong ocean currents, the Sargasso has largely immobile currents itself. The Sargasso is named for the huge mats of seaweed native to the sea known as sargassum. Although the seaweed originates there, the garbage patch does not. Anything (including garbage) that drifts into the surrounding six currents ends up in the Sargasso and never leaves because of the Sea’s stagnant internal currents and the mats of seaweed.
All of the gyres have a similar story to tell. Often, ocean storms and hurricanes can cause some of the garbage to move where it washes up in massive quantities onto any nearby beach (I think the ocean might be trying to give it back).
A whopping 90 percent of the trash in these patches is plastic. The patches cannot be seen from space because they are largely comprised of plastic that has degraded into small fragments through sunlight and wave action, and much of the patches may lie just beneath the surface. The patches contain massive quantities of large items as well, that just haven’t broken down yet.
It is the result of carelessness and the throwaway culture we live in. Much of our discarded plastic becomes litter, where it washes into storm drains and watersheds. It may come from litter on our beaches, spills out of trashcans or from garbage trucks. And that’s just land sources; an estimated 20 percent of the garbage comes from ships at sea.
Scary fact #1: only LDPE, HDPE, Polypropylene, and foamed plastics float. That means polycarbonate, polystyrene, and PETE plastics sink. One can only begin to imagine how much plastic garbage lies on the bottom of the ocean if there is this much on the top. We’ve literally turned our world’s oceans into a massive landfill.
Scary fact #2: the plastics act as an enormous chemical sponge, soaking up PCBs, DDTs, and other persistent organic pollutants, creating a massive and highly toxic patch of garbage. This is highly dangerous to any sea life that might mistake the garbage for food; and by extent, highly dangerous to everyone as the toxic waste enters the marine food web. Much the way mercury gets from tuna to us and is then stored in our bodies, these persistent pollutants may not be metabolized at any point in the food chain and thus can become more and more and more concentrated as the little fish eats the plastic, the big fish eat lots of little fish, the bigger fish eat tons of the big fish and we eat them all.
Teams of scientists are currently studying scary fact #2 to see just how much of a danger the five gyres pose to us.
And the only ‘solution’ we have is to cut off the source of the garbage – ourselves. We must fight for the plastics we use to be recovered, and refuse to throw away plastic in our daily lives. Reduce your consumption, avoid plastic! Shift your own habits and fight for change in your community and in legislation. Be a leader, be a lobbyist; care enough to do something!
Check out 5gyres.org to learn more.
Source: BecauseAction.com
