[masraum]

This is really messed up.

Mission to Break up Pacific Island of Rubbish Twice the Size of Texas | CommonDreams.org

Mr Moore found bottle caps, plastic bags and polystyrene floating with tiny plastic chips. Worn down by sunlight and waves, discarded plastic disintegrates into smaller pieces. Suspended under the surface, these tiny fragments are invisible to ships and satellites trying to map the plastic continent, but in subsequent trawls Mr Moore discovered that the chips outnumbered plankton by six to one.

Plastic Soup | Granville

In the middle of the near-deserted North Pacific, where marine life is limited and wind is practically non-existent, the all-too-common pieces of floating trash are the only visible indication of an ocean-altering problem lurking in the dark and churning waters below. Garbage from all over the globe collects here and has created an underwater landfill that spans an area estimated to be at least twice the size of Texas.


Interestingly, it’s the smallest plastic particles—polymers—that are the most dangerous. Magnets for oily toxins like DDT and PCBs, the polymers absorb and concentrate these chemicals up to levels a million times higher than they would be in the ocean alone. And, tiny as they are, polymers are eaten by creatures at the bottom of the food chain; the toxic chemicals work their way up and end up right on your dinner plate.

They’ve conducted two research expeditions (in 1999 and 2008) during which they discovered the gyre’s plastic content is climbing at an alarming rate.

“In 1999, we found six times more plastic than plankton in the patch,” says Charles Moore, founder of Algalita. “In 2008, in the convergence zone that flows into the patch, we found samples with [plastic to plankton] ratios of 40 to one.”