Most of this debris comes from plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and Styrofoam cups. In the ocean, the sun breaks down these plastics into tinier and tinier pieces, a process known as photodegradation. Second, plastic goods do not biodegrade but instead, break down into smaller pieces. First, plastic’s durability, low cost, and malleability mean that it’s being used in more and more consumer and industrial products. While many different types of trash enter the ocean, plastics make up the majority of marine debris for two reasons. A 2018 study found that synthetic fishing nets made up nearly half the mass of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, due largely to ocean current dynamics and increased fishing activity in the Pacific Ocean. These percentages vary by region, however. Denser debris can sink centimeters or even several meters beneath the surface, making the vortex’s area nearly impossible to measure.Ĩ0 percent of plastic in the ocean is estimated to come from land-based sources, with the remaining 20 percent coming from boats and other marine sources. In addition, not all of the trash floats on the surface. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is too large for scientists to trawl.
No one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Crossing the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Moore and his crew noticed millions of pieces of plastic surrounding his ship. Moore was sailing from Hawaii to California after competing in a yachting race. While oceanographers and climatologists predicted the existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it was a racing boat captain by the name of Charles Moore who actually discovered the trash vortex. Oceanographers and ecologists recently discovered that about 70% of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. This soup is intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. Microplastics can’t always be seen by the naked eye. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Many plastics, for instance, do not wear down they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.įor many people, the idea of a “garbage patch” conjures up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean.
The amount of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates because much of it is not biodegradable. The gently rolling vortexes of the Eastern and Western Garbage Patches gradually draw in the bottle. Finally, the bottle travels eastward on the North Pacific Current. Near the coast of Japan, the bottle may travel north on the powerful Kuroshiro Current. There, it may catch the North Equatorial Current, which crosses the vast Pacific. A plastic water bottle discarded off the coast of California, for instance, takes the California Current south toward Mexico. The circular motion of the gyre draws debris into this stable center, where it becomes trapped. The area in the center of a gyre tends to be very calm and stable. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is formed by four currents rotating clockwise around an area of 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles): the California current, the North Equatorial current, the Kuroshio current, and the North Pacific current. Increasingly, however, it also refers to the garbage patch as a vortex of plastic waste and debris broken down into small particles in the ocean. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines a gyre as a large system of swirling ocean currents.
The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another. This convergence zone is where warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawaii. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean.