Visiting the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch

This summer, two research expeditions are headed to the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch between California and Hawaii. Twice the size of Texas, the Garbage Patch is a massive dump of discarded plastic, much of which has deteriorated into tiny bits. Fish and birds eat the material, and die. With 70 percent of the Garbage Patch's plastic sunk under the surface, cleaning it up isn't a matter of skimming the surface of the vortex. From National Geographic:

"We need to do the chemistry and see how much plastic is reaching the water and the ocean sediments, how much is being broken into [these] tiny particles and ingested by marine life at rates we can't imagine," said (Jim Dufour of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego).

The project will also explore clean up options, which aren't as easy as simply scooping up waste.

"It's a tough job. [Open-ocean] fish live under things like Styrofoam cups. If you simply drag a net you'll end up killing off a lot of the resources that you want to protect," Dufour said.

"Giant Ocean-Trash Vortex Attracts Explorers"

• [ThreeFJeff]

  (Looking back at the thread, I would trust Anonymous@15′s data over mine, particularly considering my source, but we’re saying mostly the same thing. It’s there, it’s bad, but you can’t walk on it.)

• [Takuan]

  I can attest from direct personal experience of extremely remote Pacific islands that have beaches knee deep in accumulated plastic debris.

• [myhammie56]

  See comment #1
  I agree with your comment(s)Scaught! Thank you soooo much for thinking of us even though you don’t always see us!
  signed Bob,Patrick,Sandy and the gang!

• [Anonymous]

  This garbage patch is one of the most disgusting, disturbing phenomona of the century, and beyond. Fishermen first discovered it, doubtless to their disgust. Why don’t we sent a fleet of fishing boats out there, with their long nets, and trawl the stuff up. If we can use those nets to kill the ocean, surely we can use them to help the ocean where they can.

• [scaught]

  If theres any pineapples or sponges please leave them alone, thank you.

• [Stefan Jones]

  I wonder how much of the Garbage Patch is made of of Cabbage Patch Kids.

• [Anonymous]

  my idea is to calculate the volume of the trash and build several floating frames to contain this debris at a depth of 20-100 times deeper than it is floating loose. cable or other reinforcement could be installed before, during or bored in after filling the frames to help keep the stuff in the frames. dirt or decking over the top of it, et voila, floating island. many of the environmental problems would still exist, but would be confined to a smaller area.

• [theinnerlight]

  Yesterday my family visited a local beach park near sunset. We were appalled at the amount of plastic garbage left within 10 feet of low tide by people who had left for the day. We picked up 20 empty plastic bottles, 10 plastic cups, and 30 – 50 other pieces of plastic debris before we left. This is just in one day, I can’t imagine how much has been pulled in over the past week, month, year…

• [Anonymous]

  LIVBLUE: here’s what happns to a plastic pen cap in the ocean, crumbles into 1000s of tiny plastic bits 4 animals 2 eat http://twitpic.com/coq52

• [Spikeles]

  I’ve seen this reported on by enough reputable sources that I don’t doubt it’s real, but I too would like to see some photos.

  Hopefully these research expeditions will finally bring back the visual goods. Or bads. Whatever.

  Plastics and Marine Debris
  North Pacific Gyre Sample

• [Patrick Dodds]

  Twice the size of Texas? Mmmm, you sure? Where are the photos? And plastic, it floats doesn’t it? Breaking it down = what breaks it down? Is it a special sort of plastic that is actually biodegradable? If so, is it going to break down completely and not prove to be a problem?

• [Anonymous]

  A good photo of a floatilla of plastic garbage, twice the size of texas, would probably get some people’s attention.

• [matt blank]

  #3 – The problem with plastic is that it never breaks down into organic pieces, say like other biodegradable things. Plastic is made of chains of hydrocarbons that break up into small pieces of hydrocarbons, but never apart into other things. This happens from UV light and other environmental processes. What this means is that your plastic bag will break apart into a fine (microscopic) plastic powder but will never return to something natural, just smaller and smaller bits of plastic. This is bad because plastic then enters the food chain, with plankton absorbing the bits of plastic, getting eaten by fish, getting eaten by larger fish, etc until one day a human eats a fish riddled with plastic dust.

• [matt blank]

  PS An excellent article about this is available here: http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/health/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we_2.php

• [das memsen]

  I realize this is shameless self-promotion, but since #3 asked, I just spent countless hours researching all things plastic for a new weekly comic series I am creating, so feel free to check it out- it’s concise, but informative (and hopefully entertaining as well.)

  http://foolfactory.com/hmte/comics/two/

  It is not environmentalist hyperbole… we really are up the creek!

• [Sork]

  Wikipedia is as good start as any.

• [sbarnes2]

  BULLSH*T, I cry! Plastic decomposes when it is exposed to the elements, for example, in salt water with the sun beating down on it. Check out what Brian Dunning has to say @ skeptoid.com.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    What exactly are you crying bullshit about? We’ve already acknowledged that it’s breaking down into tiny pieces which are being ingested by fish, thus birds, etc. Does that make it alright?

• [Anonymous]

  See comment #19. It is a shame how we treat this planet and also each other. I often think we are devolving not evolving. I hope we get it together for our descendants sake.

• [Anonymous]

  There’s a short bit about this in the “This American Life” episode titled “The Middle of Nowhere”.

• [davevontexas]

  @das_memsen Your comic blog is way, way beyond awesome. Bookmarked.

• [jmnugent]

  And even if research shows us good data for where this trash vortex is centered, AND we figure out an effective way to mitigate it without further effecting ocean-life,.. at the same time we’ll need to be finding ways to drastically minimize the amount of trash going into the oceans, otherwise its like cleaning a room on one side and throwing a party on the other side.

• [Drew from Zhrodague]

  #18 – this is exactly what I want to do as soon as I get a few hundred million dollars. I figured I would purchase a couple of used oil tankers, and float them out there. The plastic can be harvested and made into useful materials (floating planters, etc). Leasing a nuclear sub from the Russians would produce power until a local power source can be built. We need a new City with a new environment, and space for hotels and industrial manufacturing. I’m still working out the details.

  They did approve a $25 increase in the unemployment compensation payout, so I am getting a little closer to my goals.

• [Anonymous]

  “Twice the size of Texas” ?!?
  Can anybody find this thing on Google Earth?
  I couldn’t.

• [bulletproofheeb]

  I’m not calling shenanigans yet but I would flag this as more than suspect. While #3 isn’t spot on about it breaking down there is the good point there there are no verified photos of this mass anywhere to be found. At the very least Google would have had a field day with this in their maps/earth product.

  Also, it’s reported as being caught in the North Pacific Gyre currents, holding it between the United States’ west coast and Hawaii. Hawaii is in the center of the North Pacific Gyre so it should actually be building up on the coasts of the Hawaiian islands.

  Nothing about this garbage patch really seems to be backed up by fact. If there are people out there that can address any of this, please do! I’d love to know more. But as of now it doesn’t make any sense as to how this mass that’s reportedly twice the size of Texas also seems to have cloaking ability and can navigate outside of established Pacific currents.

• [Patrick Dodds]

  #10 – I’m not calling shenanigans just yet either, but I would be interested in more evidence too.

• [ThreeFJeff]

  @10 and 11: it’s really out there, but there are not good pictures of it, since it is still mostly water.

  Essentially, the plastic that makes it out there gets abraded into small chunks by various processes (as noted above), and the largest pieces end up being no more than a few centimeters across (as I understand it). KQED’s Quest (if I remember correctly) had a spot on it a while back with video, but I’m only finding the radio report with google right now. Anyway, it’s not easily seen via satelite, but if you go out there and pull up a bucket of water, you will get plenty of bits of plastic. It doesn’t look like a landfill, but it’s a problem.

  They found it from studying birds that migrate over the ocean–the birds kept turning up dead from starvation with a stomach full of plastic bits. When they went looking for the source of the plastic, they found the vortex of trash.

  So, no, you can’t see it with googleearth. Sorry, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

• [Brainspore]

  I’ve seen this reported on by enough reputable sources that I don’t doubt it’s real, but I too would like to see some photos.

  Hopefully these research expeditions will finally bring back the visual goods. Or bads. Whatever.

• [Richard]

  You could start off then, by donating to this womans trip investigating that oceanic slush pile:

  Dissecting the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
  http://www.spot.us/pitches/238

• [Rodney]

  …and as the years went by the the Flotilla Commune grew as the trash island shrunk.

• [Anonymous]

  Get rid of plastic until we know what to do with it in the end.
  But no one cares.
  We will pay.

  George Vreeland Hill

• [Anonymous]

  If you read the peer-reviewed literature on plastic surveys going from Hawaii to Southern California, they find between 2 and 5 small pieces plastic per cubic meter of water – not exactly an island of trash. But, plastic concentrations are higher in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre than they are elsewhere in the North Pacific, because the currents do act to centralize the floating pieces. You do find the occasional large piece of floating debris, but most of the “patch” consists of broken bits of random plastic, and you have to drag a net through the water for hours (literally) to get enough of it to count.

  I’m not saying that plastic isn’t an issue – it is certainly killing seabirds and is being eaten by fish. But, the idea of a huge, thick mass of garbage twice the size of Texas is a complete myth, perpetuated by some to attract media attention and garner funds for research and advocacy efforts.

  Here is a link to a research cruise geared toward this issue (for example): http://hahana.soest.hawaii.edu/cmoresuperhicat/superhicat.html

  Also, visit the Algalita Marine Research Foundation. They lean toward advocacy and spin, but you can sort through their jargon for actual data (in some of the research papers): http://www.algalita.org/research.html