Azure waves pressed against huge piles of built -up junk. Garbage mountains rising above the sea. A thick crust of dirt covering the surface of the ocean. It is easy to find striking images of the great garbage patch (GPGP). The problem is that these GPGP photos are misleading and darken the truth about the GPGP content, its origin and the threat that represents our ocean life.
Traveling of the “microplasty soup”
Visiting GPGP is not easy. For the Bruno Sainte-Rose, a leading calculation monitor at Ocean Cleanup, an organization dedicated to dealing with marine waste, the trip begins with a ship to the port of Victoria in British Colombia.
The Ocean Cleanup 001 prototype was withdrawn from San Francisco Bay in September 2018 to deal with the large Pacific garbage patch. Image: Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images Josh Edelson
By sailing southwest, the first thousand miles of ocean are relatively clear. “Then suddenly, after three and a half days, you see an increase in debris’ observations,” Saint-Rose says. This garbage does not accumulate on the surface of the sea. Instead, the GPGP ocean becomes like a “microplasty soup,” Saint-Rose says. The larger objects fill this broth, including the tangles of Ghost networks – the track tables of abandoned fishing equipment. Ocean cleaning estimates that up to 86 percent of plastics in GPGP come from fishing. The non -profit organization believes that GPGP has grown to cover an ocean zone twice as big as Texas. How did this happen?
Fifty years of garbage
As early as 1973, sailors traveling across the North Pacific notice an unusually large number of human -created objects. Although it is no surprise to find pieces of plastic in our seas – a 2023 study that there are 171 trillion of them – it was surprising to find them so far from any land. “The International Space Station is actually closer to GPGP most of the time than other human beings,” St. Rose said.
The remote area of the sea where GPGP is located is surrounded by the North Pacific, a network of rotating ocean currents. These plastic and other debris that enter their stream gradually moving them through the ocean. After all, slowly turning the vortex within the Gyre in the debris. The GPGP is divided into two main areas – the West Garbage Patch near Japan and the eastern garbage patch between California and Hawaii. While the plastic can subsequently move between these two areas of GPGP, which change in size and location over time, they are unlikely to escape from these rotating currents.
According to NOAA: “Patch” is a nickname, which makes many believe that these are islands of garbage. Instead, the debris spreads over the surface of the water and from the surface all the way to the ocean floor. ” Image of: Ohoura
The cleaning of the ocean fights this accumulation. In 2024, the foundation removed 11.5 million kilograms of garbage from the world’s oceans and rivers. They even put the price of cleaning the great Pacific garbage patch. For $ 7.5 billion, the Sainte Rose team estimates that GPGP can be cleared within a decade.
Plastic ecosystem
Not everyone agrees that cleaning GPGP would be the best way to deal with the plastic problem of our ocean. Ocean cleaning uses large network systems to deer the ocean junk. These networks effectively remove larger plastic elements, but over 90 percent of the plastic elements in GPGP are the size of microplastics less than 5 mm. The net system is designed so that it is easy for animals to swim, but as they suck more pieces of plastic from the sea, the cleaning team also removes animals and germs that adhere to these objects. “You see a very wide variety of microorganisms attached to the plastic,” says Sonia Oberbekman, a marine microbiologist at the Federal Institute for Material Research and Tests in Germany. Oberbeckmann says many of these germs also live on natural materials, but some “flourish” plastic particles.
Sainte-Rose shows evidence that some of these plastic riders are invasive species that should not be present in the ocean first. In addition, targeting GPGP is just one of the approaches to ocean cleaning to their purpose for plastic waters. The dear systems installed in contaminated rivers stop the debris from entering the ocean first. These coastal cleaning is easier, cheaper offers for local authorities that are more likely to finance a river project that earns a highly visible environmental profit. Ensuring financing to clean away from home and difficult to display the Great Pacific Barbage Patch is a more difficult sale.
“That’s all the problem for everyone and no one, isn’t it?” He ends the Saint Rose.