Expedition To Explore an Alaska-Sized Plastic "Island" 325
Peace Corps Online writes "An expedition called Project Kaisei has departed bound for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a huge 'island' of plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean estimated to be the size of Alaska (some estimates place it at ten times that size). The expedition will study the impact of the waste on marine life, and research methods to clean up the vast human-created mess in the Pacific. The BBC quotes Ryan Yerkey, the project's chief of operations: 'Every piece of trash that is left on a beach or ends up in our rivers or estuaries and washes out to the sea is an addition to the problem, so we need people to be the solution.' The garbage patch occupies a large and relatively stationary region of the North Pacific Ocean bound by the North Pacific Gyre, a remote area commonly referred to as the horse latitudes. The rotational pattern created by the North Pacific Gyre draws in waste material from across the North Pacific Ocean, including the coastal waters off North America and Japan. As material is captured in the currents, wind-driven surface currents gradually move floating debris toward the center, trapping it in the region. 'You are talking about quite a bit of marine debris but it's not a solid mass,' says Yerkey. 'Twenty years from now we can't be harvesting the ocean for trash. We need to get it out but we need to also have people make those changes in their lives to stop the problem from growing and hopefully reverse the course.'"
Its mostly invisible to human eye (Score:3, Informative)
the images one conjures up reading the title is this big area filled with recognizable objects, however reading the wiki article states that the particles that comprise the bulk of the suspected pollution are too small and disperse to be imaged by satellite or aircraft.
So don't let the title fool you. While there may be occasional large pollutants its not like something your bound to spot on the horizon and just sail to it. Think about it, if it were we would have seen pictures all over the news by now.
Re:Picture / Screenshot or it never happened (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Picture / Screenshot or it never happened (Score:3, Informative)
If you read the wikipedia article linked on the first line of the summary, then you would have seen in the very first paragraph that "Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography."
microplastics particle soup (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.livescience.com/environment/071102-micro-plastics.html
"...The seas eventually break down all this plastic garbage into microscopic particles. ...
adding just a few millionths of a gram of contaminated microplastics to sediments triggered an 80 percent rise in phenanthrene accumulation in marine worms dwelling in that muck.
Such worms lie at the base of the food chain,..."
Re:The size of Alaska or bigger and no images? (Score:4, Informative)
From wikipedia: Most of the debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the water surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite images.
Waiting for this argument: (Score:0, Informative)
Lets just ignore it.
The problem of sea trash is fabricated by the biased media. sea trash doesn't exist. The earth has been in existence for four billion years (or six thousand years, depending on who you're asking) and sea trash hasn't hurt anything. It's just a natural cycle. There is no conclusive evidence that sea trash even exists.
People who preach about sea trash just want to give the government more power. For control. They want to control your ability to throw trash in the sea. $Diety$ gave us this planet, and $he/she/it$ didn't design it with sea trash in mind. It's unfaithful to claim that sea trash is a problem, or even exists.
Groups are already studying this... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How about from a boat? (Score:3, Informative)
I have to agree with GP. The reflectivity should probably be different. So some kind of satellite picture should be available. Maybe just not to us great unwashed.
Maybe it's a regional thing but I've often heard here in the midwest USA of canoe referring to "some kind of vessel". I liked the hyperbolic touch actually.
Re:The size of Alaska or bigger and no images? (Score:1, Informative)
I have looked through all the links. If this "island" is that big, it should be easy to get satellite images.
Anyone care to provide them?
It's a soup, not an island.
Re:Picture / Screenshot or it never happened (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How about from a boat? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The size of Alaska or bigger and no images? (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, some nice fellows have gone out there on boat and looked around. A quick search on youtube will get you a lot of videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnUjTHB1lvM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxNqzAHGXvs&feature=related
for example.
Some dude went out from Hawaii on a raft made out of recycled plastic bottles, and kept a blog, there's some nice photos of what they found. http://junkraft.blogspot.com
They pulled some water samples out of the water, and frankly, they look like utter shit.
Re:Treating this seriously (Score:4, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch [wikipedia.org]
Density of neustonic plastics
In a 2001 study, researchers (including Moore) found that in certain areas of the patch, concentrations of plastic reached one million particles per square mile.[12] The study found concentrations of plastics at 3.34 pieces with a mean mass of 5.1 milligrams per square meter. In many areas of the affected region, the overall concentration of plastics was greater than the concentration of zooplankton by a factor of seven.
he floating plastic particles resemble zooplankton, which can be inadvertently consumed by jellyfish. Many of these long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine birds and animals,[13] including sea turtles, and the Black-footed Albatross.
Re:Sealand #2! (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Its mostly invisible to human eye (Score:4, Informative)