Visiting The Great Garbage Patch on Earth Day
In between the coasts of California and Hawaii, almost twice the size of Texas, lies what scientists believe is the largest garbage dump in the world. The garabage floating in the North Pacific Gyre is said to contain an estimated 90% of plastic debris. Plastic in the world’s oceans has an impact on marine life.
The International Pacific Research Center (IPRC) , an international climate research center, published a Tracking Debris newsletter in 2008 featuring infographics from computer models developed by Nikolai Maximenko of predicted paths of debris in the world’s oceans. Since then Maximenko has been working on identifying places in the ocean where garbage can be collected.
Five Gyres: Courtesy of Wikipedia
There are four other gyres in the ocean, all of which make up the 5 gyres; each is a system of currents affected by wind and several levels of planetary movement.
A gyre in oceanography is any large system of rotating ocean currents, particularly those involved with large wind movements. Gyres are caused by the Coriolis Effect; planetary vorticity along with horizontal and vertical friction, which determine the circulation patterns from the wind curl (torque).[1] The term gyre can be used to refer to any type of vortex in the air or the sea, even one that is man-made, but it is most commonly used in oceanography, to refer to the major ocean systems. – Wikepedia
In recent years, scientists have been paying increasing attention to our plastic footprint in the ocean. The Northern Pacific gyre seems to be home to a congregation of garbage that has traveled along the natural current systems.
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