The Threat Of Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is inarguably one of the largest man-made affronts to the planet earth that humans have ever witnessed. This enormous mass of garbage is comprised solely of human waste and increasing in quantity every day. This largely due to human ignorance and apathy. What has been found is the scope of consequences born from these oscillating garbage dumps reach nearly every living organism on the planet. The massive accumulation of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean is a dire threat to the marine ecosystem and in turn, a threat to the many organisms that rely on it.

During the Great Depression and World War II, American culture leaned towards the conservation of resources. But, after the war, factories and industries veered away from the production of war equipment and focused on the manufacturing of peacetime supply. (Moore) Life Magazine, in an ad campaign, helped to facilitate new production by introducing the concept of throwaways. A Throwaways product is meant to be used for a short period of time and would make everything more convenient and provide the American workforce a new production and consumption model. What was overlooked, or just unknown at the time, was the impact of the plastics championed by the market of the day. Plastics take up a lot of space and don’t breakdown in nature. All they do is get smaller and smaller as the decades pass, creating a toxic marine ecosystem that seems almost impossible to mend in any reasonable timeframe.

In 1997, a scientific researcher named Charles Moore came across a seemingly endless expanse of plastic garbage in the Pacific Ocean. Before then, the garbage being released into the ocean was, for the most part, unseen. Since it was discovered, it has been named the ‘Pacific Garbage patch.’ The expanse can also be referred to as the ‘Pacific trash vortex,’ This Garbage patch is a consequence of the North Pacific Gyre. This gyre encompasses 20 million square kilometers, making the problem incredibly vast and difficult to even comprehend. (Greenberg)

Upon the initial approach to the research for this project, I was confident that the “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” was approximated to be the size of Texas. Instead, I found that the Garbage patch that plagues the North Pacific is now estimated to be twice the size of the United States. (Kostigen 68). Most of what is found in these patches consists of tiny plastic particles directly below the surface of the water. Some of the debris presents itself in large plastic pieces bobbing on the surface. Things like plastic bottles, bags, and Styrofoam tableware are the most common types of trash. According to an article describing the patch, eighty percent of the garbage in the gyre comes from sources in Japan and California. (The Pacific Garbage Patch) California has made legislative efforts to curb its use of plastics.

The implications of this daunting problem are multi-faceted. When weighing the consequences faced by the persistent buildup of garbage in the ocean, we should examine who it affects most. First, it is important to look at the marine life it affects. Nearly every type of marine life is affected due to the size variability and pervasive attributes of plastic. In a TED talk presented by Charles Moore. What he shares are some results of his study in which he says, “we wanted to see if the most common fish in the deep ocean, at the base of the food chain, was ingesting these poison pills. We did hundreds of necropsies, and over a third had polluted plastic fragments in their stomachs. The record-holder, only two-and-a-half inches long, had 84 pieces in its tiny stomach.” Seeing the impact our practices have on smaller organisms in the ocean, we can look at how that affects the larger ones. When observing bigger species that occupy the Pacific, we can see how vulnerable ocean life really is today. Just visualizing how a rudimentary food chain operates helps to comprehend the far reaching and long-term effects caused by these concentrations of garbage in the ocean. If such a large base of the pacific marine food chain is being polluted from the inside out, it is easy to understand how plastics and their residues pollute the ocean life we rely on for sustenance. In many areas studied by Moore, the amount of plastic in the water surpassed the amount of plankton.

When we finally get around to studying the effects on human populations things become slightly more focused. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the United States alone consumes 4.8 billion pounds of seafood each year. When regarding the world as a whole, our food supply is being eternally molested by our incessant use of plastics.

My family has directly been affected by the increased presence of plastics in our oceans. I grew up in a foody family in Queens, New York. Cooking was essential to the daily happenings in my childhood. This, along with the fact that I come from a Hispanic culture, allowed me to become well versed in the practice of seafood preparation. I love seafood, yet the last time I ate seafood was just days before I learned how much we don’t know about the health of that particular protein.

As I navigated the now limited seafood world, I wondered when I might be able to cook up a good ole cut of fish. What I found wasn’t comforting. According to an article titled, Here’s What Happens When Marine Animals Eat Plastic, “700 marine species are currently threatened with extinction due to the risk of ingesting or becoming entangled in plastic waste. Seabirds, fish, dolphins, polar bears, turtles, and even the largest species of whales are among those affected.” It goes on to reveal that, 80% of the anchovies caught in the Tokyo bay contained microplastics. A team dedicated to the study of anchovies looked at 64 Japanese anchovies, they found micro-plastic particles in 49 of them. These findings are incredibly disheartening. Not only because the ocean provides such a large percentage of the world’s food supply, but because the problem at hand has very few effective possible solutions.

With that being said, there are, some feasible solutions being considered by both large and small entities on the world stage. The most notable solution comes in an unexpected form. While we fumble to apply today’s technology to this gargantuan problem, some see the wisdom in applying yesterday’s innovations. Boyan Slat, a young Dutch inventor and entrepreneur, may have a solution, and if implemented on a large scale, may reduce some of the consequences we are poised to encounter in the future. When he was 16, Boyan Slat noticed something abnormal. While diving in Greece, he encountered so much plastic that catching fish was more chore than jubilation. (BoyanSlat.com) His idea to help reduce waste in the Pacific Ocean is simple yet revolutionary. It is essentially a water wheel that, over time, redirects, concentrates, then extracts floating plastics from the surface of the seas and consolidates it to be disposed on land or recycled. The sheer amount of plastic he faces is extraordinary. A study that was published in 2015, says that 4.8 to 12.7 million tons of plastic was released into the Pacific Ocean in 2010, and that that number has likely increased in the years that followed. (Williams)

With individuals and organizations rapidly realizing that steps need to be taken to rectify this awful calamity, I can see a dim light at the end of the tunnel. It is difficult to make clear how large of a problem this is, but the people tackling it have an ever-evolving understanding. With an effort that combines plastic waste reduction, active removal of refuse from the ocean, an education about the problem, we may be able to, over a very long time, undo some of the harm induced by humans in this age of oil.