The Great Pacific rubbish dump

It’s been known about for some time, but many would still be startled to hear that a giant mass of floating rubbish has accumulated in the Pacific Ocean.

Comprised of floating pieces of rubbish, plastic and lost cargo, some of the more conservative estimates put it at twice the size of the state of Texas, whilst others say it could be twice as large as the United States itself.

Its nicknames include; the Plastic Soup, the Pacific Trash Vortex, and the Great Pacific Rubbish Dump.

Discovered by chance in 1997 by Charles Moore, a sailor and oceonographer who travelled for days through endless rubbish, oceanographers have found that the mass of debris in the Pacific Ocean is kept in place by the ‘North Pacific Gyre’, a vast area of the Pacific, that due to very little wind and high pressure, the ocean circulates at a slower rate, inevitably drawing in all the plastic rubbish. After discovering this remarkable phenomenom, Moore founded the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, a non-profit organisation, dedicated to protecting the marine environment.

It is believed that there are two ‘Plastic Soups’, one between California and Hawaii, the other between Japan and Hawaii – the Eastern and Western Garbage Patches.

Pictures of this phenomenon are hard to come by, as the only effective way to photograph it would be by satellite because of its enormity, but because the plastic is translucent and just below the water, it does not show on satellite images, therefore the best way to see it would be by boat. This Greenpeace animation shows the journey of the plastic from the shores of Japan and California, to the North Pacific Gyre.

Flanked by both the Eastern and Western rubbish, Hawaii has been plagued by plastic on its beaches for decades, as adverse weather conditions cause the plastic to wash up on the shores of the Hawaiian Islands.

The total amount of plastic found inside a dead Albatross

The swirling mass of debris also poses a major threat to marine wildlife as birds mistake small pieces of plastic for food, up to a million seabirds die every year from swallowing syringes, toothbrushes, lighters and other plastic waste. Plastic makes up 90 percent of all the rubbish in the oceans.

Independant Journalist, Steve Connor: Why plastic is the scourge of the sea.

Many believe there is a threat to humans from the waste plastic. The raw material of the plastic industry, small plastic pellets called ‘nurdles’, no more than a few millimetres in diameter, which are melted down and used to make plastic products. The nurdles absorb harmful chemicals such as pesticides, and are then swallowed by marine animals which are fished and the chemicals then enter our food chain.