How Big Is the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"? Science vs. Myth

Updated February 7, 2013 - In Texas everything may be bigger, but some reports on "Pacific Big Patch" this marine plastic is bigger than Texas - probably a lonely star United States With twice the size of the mainland, NOAA separates the science from the science fiction about the Pacific trash spots (and other "junk spots"), what it is and what It is a national scientific institution that answers about what to do. The way to deal with the problem is very important to deal with the problem. In a recent article, Carey Morishige of the NOAA Ocean Debris Program removed two myths about the remaining garbage floating garbage. Ocean Fragment Blog:

There is no "garbage patch" that recalls the landfill floating in the middle of the sea, and there are no miles of PET bottles or rogue yogurt cups. Morishige explained the misnomer.

Although the concentrations of plastics in these areas are higher than other oceans indeed, most of the debris found in these areas is the plastic (microplastic) floating in the entire water column It is a small part. One of the comparisons that I like to use is that the part is not fat on (or located on) the surface, it is like a pepper spot on the soup bowl.

She did not dilute the importance of microplastic. They are almost everywhere today - from a series of larger plastic products that break up into small pieces - from facial scrubs to wool jackets and many other products [PDF] - their influence on marine life is still almost unknown It is not done. of

There are lots of "garbage spots", and we mean that garbage collects in various parts of the Pacific Ocean and other parts of the ocean. These natural gathering places appear in the rotating water where wind and other oceanic characteristics gather and marine garbage, plankton, algae and other marine organisms gather. (See these "convergence zones" in the ocean and the NOAA study on the North Pacific subtropical zone [PDF].)

No matter how you look at these "pepper soups" of the Pacific, there should be no debris. If you want to know more about the spam patch problem, the NOAA Marine Debris website and blog have many great information and resources.

Editor's Note: This post was updated on July 2, 2013 to fix the previous misstatement of the North Pacific subtropical convergence zone as "Pacific patch". The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch is actually an East Pacific garbage patch associated with the Atmosphere known as the North Pacific subtropical high.

The southeastern coast of Big Island is relatively close to the landfill in the East Pacific, which is part of a large gathering of large Pacific trash patches for marine garbage. The most easiest garbage is concentrated between the California coast and the eastern coast of Hawaii. These so-called debris fragments are the result of the ocean and atmospheric pressure, push objects floating in the ocean - marine life, pollution, small plastic pieces - into a common area. However, as some people began to believe, it did not converge on the floating trash island.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific Pacific Garbage Swirl, extends to the waters from North America's west coast to Japan. The patch actually consists of garbage patches in the west in the vicinity of Japan and a garbage patch in the eastern part between Hawaii and California. These rotating debris areas are connected by subtropical convergence zones in the North Pacific, located hundreds of kilometers north of Hawaii. It is a place where warm water from the South Pacific encounters cold water from the North Pole. This area is like an expressway that moves garbage from one patch to the other. The whole Great Pacific Garbage Patch is surrounded by the North Pacific subtropical circulation. The circulation of the ocean is a circular ocean current system formed by the wind pattern of the earth and the force generated by the rotation of the planet. These four currents move clockwise with an area of ​​20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles).