Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Once waterborne, debris becomes mobile. Flotsam can be blown by the wind, or follow the flow of ocean currents, often ending up in the middle of oceanic gyres where currents are weakest. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one such example of this, comprising a vast region of the North Pacific Ocean rich with anthropogenic wastes. Estimated to be double the size of Texas, the area contains more than 3 million tons of plastic. The gyre contains approximately six pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton per cubic meter of seawater. The oceans may contain as much as one hundred million tons of plastic.
Islands situated within gyres frequently have coastlines flooded by waste that washes ashore; prime examples are Midway and Hawaii. Clean-up teams around the world patrol beaches to attack this environmental threat.
Read more about this topic: Marine Debris
Famous quotes containing the words pacific, garbage and/or patch:
“It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one’s being alone.... It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“But could a dream send up through onion fumes
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday’s garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms
Even if we were willing to let it in,”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.
O that that earth which kept the world in awe
Should patch a wall t’expel the winter’s flaw!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)