Original Research - Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The topic is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which is located in the northern Pacific Ocean and is caused by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. The garbage expanse itself is the largest “landfill” in the world, and is home to millions of pounds of predominantly plastic waste. Some facts about the problem: it is broken into two massive patches (Eastern and Western), the Eastern patch lies between Hawaii and California and is estimated to be larger than the state of Texas, while the Western patch lies between Japan and Hawaii.

            The accumulation itself is in itself caused by the Subtropical Convergence Zone, which is a 6,000-mile long current that gathers debris from all over the world and deposits it at the patches. Plastic makes up an approximated 90 percent of all of this flotsam, an estimated 10 percent of the 200 billion pounds of plastic produced each year ends up in the ocean, and it provides an incredible danger for the marine life and the environment itself. Plastic itself never biodegrades, breaks down into simpler substances, but rather it photodegrades, a process in which the plastic breaks into smaller pieces of plastic called “nurdles.” These nurdles are what prove to be the most dangerous, as they absorb toxicity and make their way into the diet of almost all parts of the marine food chain.

            Scientists believe it would be impractical and almost impossible to clean the entire ocean, as the area is large than a continent and reaches 100 feet below the surface. However research institutions and volunteer based organizations are trying to develop ways to help clean this all up.

            My offered solution to this problem is to create a naval craft that has the capability to be a recycling facility afloat. There is a virtually unlimited supply of plastic, and with proper trawling and extraction methods it could be done with little damage to the marine ecosystem. If such a grandiose solution was possible, it may not make effective immediate relief but long-term it could prevent the possibility of future photodegradation and make process on cleaning the oceans. Another more viable solution is to monitor the current on which the garbage travels, and collect at certain intervals along it rather than attempting to fix the giant mass of trash.

References

http://www.algalita.org/about-us/5-Gyres.html\

http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/great-pacific-garbage-patch3.htm