Why is the world’s biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean?
I had a real good friend stay with us this weekend. Andrew told me this story about how we have made a large dump in the sea. I could not get it out of my mind. Many times I have told our interns at the Aquaponics and Earth farm that in the last few years millions of hectors of land have been purchased by governments of the world because of the poisoning of the seas and rivers. Leaders know that we must develop aquaculture farms on our planet because of the days ahead.
In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents.
The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. It’s the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean.
The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California; scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas [source: LA Times]. The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone.
The garbage patches present numerous hazards to marine life, fishing and tourism.
Plastic constitutes 90 percent of all trash floating in the world’s oceans [source: LA Times]. The United Nations Environment Program estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean hosts 46,000 pieces of floating plastic [source: UN Environment Program]. In some areas, the amount of plastic outweighs the amount of plankton by a ratio of six to one. Of the more than 200 billion pounds of plastic the world produces each year, about 10 percent ends up in the ocean [source: Greenpeace]. Seventy percent of that eventually sinks, damaging life on the ocean floor [source: Greenpeace]. The rest floats; much of it ends up in gyres and the massive garbage patches that form there, with some plastic eventually washing up on a distant shore.
Find out how you can recycle your plastic items. We will discuss this in the future. Call your local city office and they will lead you to ways you can help one by one we can make a difference!
Thanks for the informative (yet scary) article on oceanwater contamination. I will definitely be looking for more farm-raised fish.
ME too!!! WOW!
wow.. this is really sad. How come you never hear about stuff like this?
this is horrible!
Thank you for making this information available to us. I never would have known!
This is intense. So at least Aquaponics and Earth is recycling the fish waste and feeding the plants, and then using compost from that to make soil… it’s all a recycling place.
Chris,
If we heard everything that is taking place in our world it would create a state of global panic. People who walk in wisdom need to have eyes to see and hears to hear and act!
Yes, this is true! What we can recycle is simply amazing suff that we through away every day and goes to the trash collector and then to the landfills. I suggest starting simple and create habits and you will become more conscious of waste that can be turned into helpful products.
This is so scarey and sad…Thank Goodness there are people like you, who want to make a differnce buy helping earth and the people who live on it to be healthier.