The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Is this What is Left of the Ocean?
Pacific Garbage, According to a very recently conducted study, approximately 170 trillion pieces of plastic are bobbing in the ocean. Researchers suggest that this number is bound to grow as they go about discovering the refined pieces of this huge pile of garbage that have now sunk to the bottom of the blue oceans.
Here’s another staggering fact; according to another report, over 100 million marine animals die every year due to plastic pollution. The marine biologists say that this is just the number pertaining to the creatures that they find in the vastness.
This is how the plastic we use and simply discard, thinking it is just a thin piece of polythene, can wreak havoc in the oceans, let alone on land. This every-drop-makes-an-ocean of plastic is now called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
According to the BBC, Charles Moore was sailing from Hawaii to California in 1997 when he noticed a torrent of plastic floating in the ocean. This torrent was coming from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
After rigorous research and investigation, when he came back to the spot, he said that using a net system to sample the ocean surface, he accumulated 6 times more garbage than they could accumulate plankton.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, or as it has been termed, Trash Island is a large patch of plastic that was floating in the ocean and then was brought together by ocean currents called gyres.
As fascinating as the oceans sound, this mountain of human-generated garbage can be seen from space.
Moore says that it is highly difficult to capture the patch as it is very mobile and keeps floating. This gives Google Earth, Drones, or even satellites a hard time finding it.
He adds that over the next twenty-five years, we have gained a deeper understanding of garbage patches, and some have even tried to measure and clean them up. However, there are still a lot of false beliefs about these isolated trash regions, where not many people feel comfortable going.
According to a 2018 study, there are at least 79,000 tonnes of ocean plastic floating inside 1.6 million sq km (618,000 sq miles), which is four to sixteen times more than what was previously estimated. This is three times the size of France or twice the size of Texas.
As the oceanographers put it, ships can sail in and out of the garbage patch, or GDGP, and never know about it. This is because 94% of the patch is made up of microplastic, which is not so hard to miss.
A paper that came out in 2021 says that the growth of the Pacific Garbage rate of all 6 garbage patches across the oceans is 2.5% based on current trends, but researchers believe that this is a conservative estimate.
The Rise of Plastisphere
The presence of plastic in the ocean can pose a number of threats to the environment and the ecosystem of the ocean. Their impact is so intense that it has given rise to the term ‘plastisphere’, an ecosystem where organisms evolve to live on human-generated waste.
Floating plastic entangles marine animals like turtles and sharks and it also enters their system as they mistake it for food.
In an additional study, 484 invertebrates were found among the approximately 100 plastic fishing items taken from the GPGP. Some animals were carried by ocean currents out of their natural habitat and onto plastics in the patch, where they run the risk of developing unusual mutations or biohazards.
Few countries will assume responsibility for the garbage patches that build up in the high seas or the areas of the ocean outside of territorial waters.
Read also: Lost Continent of Argoland – Found After 155 Million Years
