Great Pacific Garbage
Yes, you’re very smart. That is not the garbage patch pictured above. It’s just there for editorial purposes.
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.
December 26, 2008 at 1:49 pm
The sephardics are obviously to blame ( sephardim.com) pacific rim sephards , they’ll kill us all !!!
February 23, 2009 at 11:47 am
the sea is not to blame it is the people on ships, boats and planes that throw trash into the pacific
April 23, 2009 at 9:58 pm
The trash I would imagine as also washed down streams and rivers after being blown around on land for awhile
April 25, 2009 at 11:17 am
Hi,
my name is Justine. I hav heard of this “garbage swirl” before, and seeing more images of it triggered me to do something. It has recently come to my attention that Whole Foods has outlawed the us of plastic bags. Many other countries such as China, Ireland, and Australia have also outlawed this harmful product. I have been wriing to many other large chain stores to quit their use of plastic bags, but it will take more than just a 14 year old girl to sway them. Please, if you truly care about your planet, start a petition of your own! I have all the adresses and phone numbers of the large corprate offices, so if you decide to help, I will post them on this blog.
thank you.
April 25, 2009 at 1:08 pm
The area featured isn’t even remotely where they report this thing to be. So this photo is hardly proof. If anything it looks like remnants of storm upwelling. Rest assured we’re destroying our oceans with pollutants, but if we’re going to get people on our side let’s please stick with highlighting undeniable facts. That researchers haven’t been able to come up with a single contextualized photograph of this “island” is beyond troublesome.
May 5, 2009 at 9:11 pm
I will have to agree with BS Detector, why not apply this simple solution of “facts” to every aspect of our lives. I am not denying such a trash pile does not exist, I am certain it is a good possibility. I would like to stick to facts and not opinions.
May 23, 2009 at 2:59 am
Not that I’m syaing this is a false claim, but I’ve been searching google for hours and I can’t find any pictures of this floating mess of garbage.
All the ‘facts’ that people are talking about are estimations, and best guesses from environmentalists.
Again, not saying it’s untrue, but show me a damn picture and I might actually beleive you.
August 5, 2009 at 4:34 am
The picture you posted is not of the Garbage, but of chlorophyll blooms east of Hokkaido (also here: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=38917).
I am also very much concerned about the environment and the pacific garbage but please do not mislead people. Science and truthful information should lead us in winning this battle for environmental protection.
August 5, 2009 at 4:37 am
it is hard to get a picture of it from space, the garbage are tiny bits of plastic stretching for thousands of miles. Here is a cnn article about it:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/04/pacific.garbage.patch/index.html
peace.
August 6, 2009 at 7:23 pm
That’s not the garbage patch…
That’s just a gyre.
The patch is somewhere around in the space North of Hawaii and between Hawaii and San Fransisco.
September 1, 2009 at 1:07 pm
That is not a picture of the Garbage Patch, it is simply a gyre.. the garbage in the Pacific CANNOT be seen from a satellite photo
Original photo source:
http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=1225