Garbage Island

Sound like your next romantic getaway? Hopefully not.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or garbage island, is a collection of marine debris that has started to form what looks like a small island. That’s how much garbage we have thrown into our waters. There is actually so much garbage now that two separate islands have formed, an East and a West. The east is located between the US states of Hawaii and California and the west near Japan.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, and for those who don’t know what that is, a gyre is a system of circular currents formed by the Earth’s winds. The center of the gyre is peaceful, and that is where the garbage gets dragged into and becomes trapped.

If you were to go search for this island, you may not be able to see it with the naked eye. The water looks soup like and is definitely not clear. This is due to all the micro plastics in the water. Scientists have found that 70% of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean. So if you were to take a dive at garbage island, to be honest, you probably wouldn’t be able to see very far past that plastic water bottle right in front of you.

Roughly 80% of garbage island is made up land based activities in America and Asia. The remaining 30% of debris comes from boaters and offshore oil rigs. About 705,000 tons is made up of fishing nets alone.

This gyre of garbage is very harmful to marine life. For example, animals mistake certain plastics for food and die from ingesting them. Seals and dolphins can get trapped within the nets. This large amount of garbage is also blocking sunlight from reaching the bottom where plankton and algae live. If these two are affected then our entire food web may change.

So what can we do about this? Sadly, since the patch is so far from any countries coast line no nation has stepped up to take responsibility. To be honest, cleaning up this garbage mess would probably bleed any nation dry. Cleaning up micro plastics is a problem as they are about the same size as small sea creatures. If you’re using a net to capture the plastic, you’re going to capture the animals as well. The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration’s Marin Debris Program has estimated that it would take about 67 ships one year to clean up ONLY less than one percent of the Pacific ocean. Yikes.

What we can do from land though is be cautious of what were throwing away. Make sure any plastics are being recycled and stop using products that contain micro plastics. Switch to organic shampoos and toothpastes and make sure you’re using reusable materials. What do you do in your day-to-day routine to limit garbage? If you have any other ideas, we would love to hear them!

– K