The North Pacific Gyre, located in the northern Pacific Ocean, is one of the five major oceanic gyres. This gyre covers most of the northern Pacific Ocean. It is the largest ecosystem on Earth, located between the equator and 50° N latitude, and comprising 20 million square kilometers. The gyre has a clockwise circular pattern and is formed by four prevailing ocean currents: the North Pacific Current to the north, the California Current to the east, the North Equatorial Current to the south, and the Kuroshio Current to the west. It is the site of an unusually intense collection of man-made marine debris, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Famous quotes containing the words north, pacific and/or gyre:
“The North will at least preserve your flesh for you; Northerners are pale for good and all. There’s very little difference between a dead Swede and a young man who’s had a bad night. But the Colonial is full of maggots the day after he gets off the boat.”
—Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mismy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)