While the Ozone heals itself, we have big problems down here on
Earth's Surface.
Great Pacific garbage patch - Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The area of increased plastic particles is located within the
North Pacific Gyre,
one of the five major
The Great Pacific garbage patch, also described as the Pacific trash
vortex, is a
gyre
of
marine debris
particles in the central
North Pacific Ocean.
It is located roughly from
135°W
to
155°W
and
35°N
to
42°N.
[1]
The collection of plastic, floating trash halfway between Hawaii and California
[2]
extends over an indeterminate area of widely varying range depending
on the degree of
plastic
concentration used to define it.
The patch is characterized by exceptionally high relative
pelagic
concentrations of
plastic,
chemical sludge
and other
debris
that have been trapped by the currents of the
North Pacific Gyre.
[3]
Despite the common public image of islands of floating rubbish, its
low density (4 particles per cubic meter) prevents detection by
satellite imagery,
or even by casual boaters or divers in the area. It consists primarily
of an increase in suspended, often microscopic, particles in the upper
water column.
The patch is not easily seen from the sky, because the plastic is
dispersed over a large area. Researchers from
The Ocean Cleanup
project claimed that the patch covers 1.6 million square kilometers.
The plastic concentration is estimated to be up to 100 kilograms per
square kilometer
in the center, going down to 10 kilograms per square kilometer in the
outer parts of the patch. An estimated 80,000 metric tons of plastic
inhabit the
patch, totaling 1.8 trillion pieces. 92% of the mass in the patch
comes from objects larger than 0.5 centimeters.
[4]
Research indicates that the patch is rapidly accumulating.
[5]
A similar patch of floating plastic debris is found in the Atlantic
Ocean, called the
North Atlantic garbage patch.
