Was anyone really surprised when the Sea Education Association announced that marine researchers had discovered a huge plastic “Garbage Patch” in the north Atlantic? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has been in the news since it was discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore while he was returning to the US mainland from a sailing race in Hawaii. Since then, a number of other oceanic Garbage Patches have been identified around the globe including one in the Sargasso Sea of the South Atlantic, and others in the South Pacific and Indian oceans.
Researchers carried out 6,100 tows in the Caribbean and the North Atlantic over two decades, and ended up with the longest and most extensive record of plastic marine debris in any ocean. More than half of these expeditions revealed floating pieces of plastic on the water surface and the pieces were typically small “mermaid tears” or “nurdles” up to 1 cm across.
The maximum density of plastic debris was 200,000 pieces per square kilometre – a density comparable to the Pacific patch – and Chief Scientist Dr. Lavender Law said “More than 80% of the plastic pieces we collected in the tows were found between 22 and 38 degrees north. So we have a latitude where this rubbish seems to accumulate.” [BBC]
Marine researchers agree that plastic constitutes the largest percentage of ocean trash by far, and the numbers are staggering. Greenpeace suggests that “Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean,” and further states that “In some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one.” The United Nations Environmental Program estimated in 2006 that “every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic” and the LA Times suggested that plastics make up “90% of all trash floating in the world’s oceans.”
Further reading: Rubber Ducks and Mermaid Tears
