The eighth continent? The troubling Pacific Garbage Island
Pacific Garbage Island is a huge floating island of plastic, about 3 times the size of France, and growing at a worrying rate.
This is a large collection of marine debris accumulated in the North Pacific Ocean. This debris is rubbish that ends up in the ocean, seas and other large bodies of water such as rivers or lakes.
For many scholars of the subject, rather than an island, something physical, it is more of a stain, a accumulated waste in the water, which are also at various depths.
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This huge floating plastic island between California and Hawaii contains at least 79,000 tonnes of discarded plastic covering an area of about 1.6 million square kilometres in total.
In reality, no one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Moreover, since not all of the debris floats to the surface, it makes it even more of a problem. impossible to get rid of it. As the densest debris can sink centimetres or even several metres below the surface, it makes the area of the vortex almost impossible to measure.
Where did all this rubbish come from?
It is believed that 80 percent of the plastic in the ocean comes from land-based sources, and the remaining 20 percent from ships and other marine sources. However, these percentages vary from area to area.
A recent study found that the synthetic fishing nets made up almost half of the mass of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, largely due to the dynamics of ocean currents and increased fishing activity in the Pacific Ocean.
It is true that many different types of litter enter the ocean, but plastics make up the majority of marine litter for two reasons. FirstlyThe durability, low cost and malleability of plastic means that it is increasingly being used in consumer and industrial products..
Secondly, plastic products do not biodegrade, but break down into smaller pieces.
In the ocean, the sun breaks down these plastics into smaller and smaller pieces, a process known as photodegradation. Most of this waste comes from plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles and Styrofoam cups.
An environmental hazard that affects everyone
The waste that ends up in the sea is tremendously harmful to marine life. For example, loggerhead turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, their favourite food. Albatrosses mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to their chicks, which die of starvation or organ rupture.
Seals and other marine mammals are particularly at risk. When abandoned plastic fishing nets, largely discarded due to inclement weather and illegal fishing, are left behind, they become trapped. Seals and other mammals often drown in these forgotten nets, a phenomenon known as "ghost fishing".
Marine litter may also disrupt marine food chains in the North Pacific. As microplastics and other debris accumulate on or near the ocean surface, they block sunlight from reaching the plankton and algae below.
Algae and plankton are the most common autotrophs, or producers, in the marine food web. Autotrophs are organisms that can produce their own nutrients from carbon and sunlight.
If algal and plankton communities are threatened, the entire food web may be subject to change.
Animals that feed on algae and plankton, such as fish and turtles, will have less food. If populations of these animals decline, there will be less food for predators at the other end of the scale, such as tuna, sharks and whales.
Over time and on a material level, this results, among many other things, in seafood becoming less available and more expensive in shops for humans.
But these dangers are compounded by the fact that plastics leach and absorb harmful pollutants.
As plastics break down through photo-degradation, they leach dyes and chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), which have been linked to environmental and health problems. In addition, plastics can also absorb pollutants, such as PCBs, from seawater. And these chemicals can enter our food chain when consumed by marine life.
Does the Pacific Garbage Island have a solution?
Because the Great Pacific Garbage Island is so far from the coast of any country, no nation is taking responsibility or appears to be close to providing the funds to clean up this disaster.. Charles Moore is the man who discovered the vortex, and he says that clearing the rubbish patch "would bankrupt any country" that tried. What an omen.
Fortunately, many people and international organisations are dedicated to preventing the Pacific rubbish patch from growing.
But cleaning up marine litter is not as easy as it sounds. Many microplastics are the same size as small marine animals, so nets designed to collect litter would also trap these creatures.
Even if nets could be designed to catch only litter, the size of the oceans makes this work too time-consuming to consider.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Debris Programme has estimated that 67 ships would take a year to clean up less than one percent of the rubbish in the North Pacific Ocean.
Many expeditions have travelled through the Pacific Garbage Island. Charles Moore, who discovered the patch in 1997, continues to raise awareness through his own environmental organisation, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation.
During an expedition in 2014, Moore and his team used drones to assess the extent of the litter below from above. The drones determined that there is 100 times more plastic by weight than previously measured.
All this floating plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Island inspired National Geographic explorer David de Rothschild and his team at Adventure Ecology to create a large catamaran made of plastic bottles: the Plastiki.
The Plastiki showcased the strength and durability of plastics, the creative ways they can be reused, and the threat they pose to the environment when they do not decompose.
In 2010, the crew successfully sailed the Plastiki from San Francisco, California, to Sydney, Australia.
Scientists and explorers agree that limit or eliminate the use of disposable plastics and increase the use of biodegradable resources. will be the best way to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Organisations such as the Plastic Pollution Coalition and the Plastic Oceans Foundation are using social media and other direct actions to support individuals, manufacturers and companies in their transition from toxic and disposable plastics to biodegradable or reusable materials.
