Great Pacific Garbage Patch #2
Saturday, 29. August 2009, 18:06:22
In June 2009 a high-seas mission departed from San Francisco to map and explore the Pacific Garbage Patch, as I mentioned in a post about the garbage patch on 27 May 2009. The ocean scientists recently came back from there voyage, and in fact the situation is worse than they thought. They found plastic debris strewn across a 2,700 km long stretch of open sea.
Smaller expeditions have come across the patch before, but researchers from Project Kaisei and the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) journeyed through the entire area, collecting samples the whole way. The plastic trash is difficult to visualize from satellites since much of it consists of tiny plastic flecks beneath the surface of the ocean. Among the upsetting things seen by the team: barnacles attached to plastic bottles, and crabs, sea anemones, and sponges living alongside the trash. And while the expedition covered 2,700 km, members of the Kaisei team say the patch could be much, much larger.
The team have brought back samples, they will spend at least six months on analysis of the problem to figure out the density of debris in the ocean, sort out the types of plastic there, and determine the ecological impact on wildlife in the Pacific. Some researchers even theorize that the plastic could be recovered and turned into fuel.
Cleanup will be difficult because the vast majority are small, about the size of a thumbnail or smaller - a lot of particles are about the size of the animals that are living out there, so that would certainly present a challenge to removing those particles.
The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California and has earlier been estimated to be an island of rubbish twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic.
PS of 31 August 2009:
See also http://sio.ucsd.edu/Expeditions/Seaplex/
Smaller expeditions have come across the patch before, but researchers from Project Kaisei and the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX) journeyed through the entire area, collecting samples the whole way. The plastic trash is difficult to visualize from satellites since much of it consists of tiny plastic flecks beneath the surface of the ocean. Among the upsetting things seen by the team: barnacles attached to plastic bottles, and crabs, sea anemones, and sponges living alongside the trash. And while the expedition covered 2,700 km, members of the Kaisei team say the patch could be much, much larger.
The team have brought back samples, they will spend at least six months on analysis of the problem to figure out the density of debris in the ocean, sort out the types of plastic there, and determine the ecological impact on wildlife in the Pacific. Some researchers even theorize that the plastic could be recovered and turned into fuel.
Cleanup will be difficult because the vast majority are small, about the size of a thumbnail or smaller - a lot of particles are about the size of the animals that are living out there, so that would certainly present a challenge to removing those particles.
The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California and has earlier been estimated to be an island of rubbish twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic.
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http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=plastics-patch-found-acro
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http://www.inhabitat.com/2009/08/28/great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-worse-than-we-thought/
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http://my.opera.com/nielsol/blog/2009/05/27/pacific-garbage-patch
PS of 31 August 2009:
See also http://sio.ucsd.edu/Expeditions/Seaplex/
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