All about the great pacific garbage patch

Why there

Currents (processes) 

The cause is the North Pacific Gyre:

• *Gyre- a system of rotating currents. *clockwise*  

• Horse latitude currents are 30 degrees north and south of the equator. 

• These currents are- Kuroshio, California, North Pacific, and North Equatorial. 

• Gyre occasionally spits out accumulated debris, causing garbage to end up on beaches. 

Human activities (Cause)

• Size is the accumulation of non-biodegradable materials, the majority plastic some glass/metal. 

• The majority of garbage flows into oceans via sewage and rivers. 

• Most of the garbage comes from land-based activities, littering the most common. Wind can pick up garbage ending up in lakes and waterways, eventually making it to oceans. 

• Others come from throwing garbage off boats, and lost fishing equipment, (mainly made out of plastic

What is where?

- When looking at where the great pacific garbage patch is, we can look at both the absolute and relative location. 

-Absolute location, we can see that the longitude is -145.0000 and the latitude is 38.0000.

- Our relative location of the garbage patch is how the water ranges. This is from the west coast of North America which is the California area, all the way to Japan, so we can clearly imagine how much waste is on the surface of this ocean.

What is the great pacific garbage patch?

- the great pacific garbage patch is marine debris that polluted the ocean and has been killing animals and the wildlife in and around the north pacific ocean

Why is this a problem?

1. Animals are harmed:

-Animals mistake these plastics as food and they die. The plastics when ingested damage the organs

-Animals not only mistaken plastic for food but they even get tangled in large plastics like old fishing nets, they struggle to get out of the nets and die as they can’t breath 

-The plastic not only affects the animal that ate it but can affect a whole food web due to bioaccumulation. If a fish eats some sort of plastic, its predator then eats that and it keeps on going and eventually disrupts the food chain and even the top carnivores can get affected.

2. Plastic isn't biodegradable:

-Over time, these plastics just break down into smaller pieces and during this process, it releases toxic chemicals that are bad for the environment

3.Why and what we should do to stop it:

-It’s extremely hard to clean up the actual garbage patch as removing such small plastics can kill marine animals and isn’t the most efficient method

-It would also take a lot of money to clean such a massive patch 

-If our actions don’t stop and we keep on using plastics and disposing them into our oceans, many of the marine life will die off and the ocean will become one giant plastic patch

-We should use environmentally friendly alternatives and reuse and recycle 

Fun Facts:

-Great pacific garbage patch surface area is 1.6 million square kilometers which is actually twice the size of Texas. 

-This means that 1.6 million square kilometers of trash are visible on the surface of the water, but 70% of marine debris sinks to the bottom of the ocean. This means that only 30% of the trash is actually visible to us, so there is so much more trash that is under the water that we can’t see. 

-There are about 1.1 to 3.6 trillion pieces of plastic in the great pacific garbage patch which is a crazy amount. 

-The garbage patch is found within the north pacific gyre and was founded in the year 1997, meaning it is has been about 24 years since this patch started filling up with trash