GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the
North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and
other large bodies of water.
The Great Pacific
Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific
trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan.
The patch is actually comprised of the Western
Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawaii and
California.
These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone,
located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawaii. This convergence zone is where
warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic.
The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another.
The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. An ocean gyre is a system of circular ocean
currents formed by the Earth’s wind patterns and the forces created by the
rotation of the planet. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is created by
the interaction of the California, North Equatorial, Kuroshiro, and North
Pacific currents. These four currents move in a clockwise direction around an
area of 20 million square kilometers.
The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may
also be an underwater trash heap.
Oceanographers and ecologists recently
discovered that about 70 percent of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom
of the ocean.
For many people, the idea of a “garbage patch” conjures up
images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches
are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics
can’t always be seen by the naked eye. Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a
giant patch of garbage. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup.
Because the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is so far from any
country’s coastline, no nation will take responsibility or provide the funding
to clean it up
THE OCEAN CLEANUP
PROJECT
The Ocean Cleanup is non-government engineering
environmental organization based in Netherlands that develops technology to extract
plastic pollution from the oceans. After a couple of years of various tests
they deployed their first full scale prototype. It ran into difficulty after
two months and was towed to Hawaii for inspection and repair.
The system consists of a 600-meter-long floater that sits at
the surface of the water and a tapered 3-meter-deep skirt attached below. The
floater provides buoyancy to the system and prevents plastic from flowing over
it, while the skirt stops debris from escaping underneath.
In October 2018, the Ocean Cleanup Project launched its
highly lauded trash-collection device, named System 001 or ‘Wilson.’ The system was, essentially, a 2,000-foot
U-shaped barrier with a long skirt dangling below. It was meant to float along
the ocean’s surface, trapping plastic while avoiding harm to marine life.
In June 2019 their second prototype system was deployed.
