Great Pacific Garbage
Also known as the Trash Vortex and a variety of other names, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch exists in the North Pacific Gyre, a clockwise swirl of currents that’s home to little except phytoplankton - and trash. Lots of trash. ( [A gyer is] a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. hey) So much trash that for every pound of plankton, it’s estimated there’s 6 pounds of plastic garbage.
Occasionally, ocean currents will change and release some of cache of garbage, which winds washing up on the beaches around the outskirts of the gyre in huge amounts. Ocean researcher Charles Moore reported the amount of plastics in areas of the gyre to be somewhere around 3.3 million pieces per square kilometer! CREDIT DUE
Theres a better write up here though.
If you ask me, just put up a giant Brita filter around it, and we’ve got ourselves a good place to put our trash.
April 8, 2008 at 3:55 am
where is that a picutre of? Like which countries are pictured in that image?
April 18, 2008 at 7:40 pm
This is the northern half of Japan; the top island is Hokkaido, and the southern is Honshu.