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.