The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Have you heard of it?  It is an area about 1,700 miles long about 1,000 miles off the coast of California, and about 1,000 miles N of Hawaii.  How long is that?  Get in your car in Boston and start driving South and West.  When you've driven 1,700 miles you are in Dallas, TX.  Holy shit!



Here is the wikipedia link which gives a decent description of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  It has been speculated about since the late 80s, but satellite photos are not able to get it because it is not one big mass of milk cartons, but instead millions of tiny particles and small pieces--and they are in the water, not on it.  Here is a quote from Miriam Goldstein, a captain of a research voyage to it:

"There’s no island, there’s no eighth continent, it doesn’t look like a garbage dump. It looks like beautiful ocean. But then when you put the nets in the water, you see all the little pieces."

It was 'discovered' in 1997 by a guy named Charles Moore in a Pacific Ocean boat race--he was so amazed he has been raising awareness ever since.  In 2009 a project was undertaken by a joint US/Japanese venture trying to clean it up Project Kaisei.  And this next link is for their actual site which has a handful of interesting videos about what they call the Plastic Vortex.

We're trash producers that is for sure--hell, I'm staring at a styrofoam Dunkin Donuts cup right now.  I try and recycle as much as possible and tread a little lighter every year.  Hopefully we'll figure out a way to clean it up--f'ing up thousands of square miles of oceans can't be a good thing.