The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
A Continent of Plastic and Trash Threatens Birds and Marine Life
Aug 19, 2009
Well, if it floats, there's a good chance it will find its way to the greatest gathering of garbage the world has ever known. According to Justin Berton's October 19, 2007 article for the San Francisco Chronicle, "Continent-size Toxic Stew of Plastic Trash Fouling Swath of Pacific Ocean," marine biologists describe this lost-and-found of things not wanting to be found as "a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas." Per Berton, the trash collection sits in a rarely traversed segment of the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii. Mostly made up of plastics (roughly 80 percent) and other marine life killers (e.g., ghost nets), the floating garbage heap weighs approximately 3.5 million tons. And it's growing.
Scientists have given this waste phenomenon a name, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It is located in the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, a vortex of converging currents approximately 1000 miles off the coast of California. According to Berton, the Garbage Patch "has been growing, along with ocean debris worldwide, tenfold every decade since the 1950s," with 80 percent of the pollutants originating on land.
How the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Harms Marine Life
According to John Timmer's ARS Technica article, "Floating, Texas-sized Garbage Patch Threatens Pacific Marine Sanctuary," plastic in the patch exists at five kilograms per square kilometer. This figure is nearly six times the density of plankton in the same area. Essentially, when fish surface in order to feed on plankton, they have six times better odds of eating plastic. Animals that eat too much plastic die because they cannot pass it, it fills their stomachs, and they starve to death.
And it's not just fish. According to Berton's article, "sea turtles mistake clear plastic bags for jellyfish. Birds swoop down and swallow indigestible shards of plastic." Floating on the surface, the plastics appear to be feeding grounds to these creatures. They feed, and they die.
Larger animal life is also affected. Whales, dolphins, waterfowl, turtles and fish alike fall victim to asphyxiation, strangulation, contamination, entanglement, or a number of additional hazards presented by the Garbage Patch. According to Berton's article, more than 267 marine species have been harmed by the debris.
How the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Harms Human Life
Why should humans be concerned about marine life 1000 miles away? All trash converging in one place seems like a convenient and fortunate method of disposal, right? So some animals die. What harm could the Great Pacific Garbage Patch do to humans?
According to a 2001 study by staff at the University of Tokyo and reported in the Sydney Morning Herald article, "The Plastic Killing Fields," "plastic polymers act like a sponge for resilient poisons such as DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls . . . [N]on-water-soluble toxic chemicals can be found in plastic in levels as high as a million times their concentration in water. As small pieces of plastic are mistaken for fish eggs and other food by marine life, these toxins enter the food chain."
Thus begins the processes known as bioaccumulation and biomagnification. Sound scary? They can be. "The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines ‘bioaccumulation’ as ‘the uptake and retention of a substance by an aquatic organism from its surrounding media and food.’ ‘Biomagnification’ is defined as ‘the transfer and stepwise increase in bioaccumulation of a chemical in organisms through successive trophic levels.’” Robert I. Fassbender, Reducing Great Lake Toxics: Can We Do More for Less Through Wastewater Effluent Trading?, 1 Wis. Envtl. L.J. 57, 58 n.1 (1994) (citing Water Quality Guidance for the Great Lakes System, 58 Fed. Reg. 20,802-21,047).
Simply put, the effects of the pollutants magnify as they advance up the food chain. At the top are whales (e.g. the beluga, populations of which have been severely poisoned by ocean trash), dolphins, and humans, who could end up eating the contaminated fish from these waters. The likelihood of this increases with the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, so it is in humanity's best interests to curb (and ideally remove) the pollutants.
Are There Any Practical Solutions?
Not really. Americans and Japanese seem to be the largest contributors to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Limiting the use of plastics and otherwise re-using and recycling all waste products where possible are good starts. Stricter penalties for land-based pollution may act as deterrents, slowing the growth of the Garbage Patch, but they offer no remedial advantage. Plus, little can be done to enforce anti-polluting laws off-shore, particularly in international waters.
Ideally, the endless miles of trash would have to be removed and recycled or destroyed (potentially creating a host of additional environmental problems). The cost of removal would be in the billions and would require international support. It's not as easy as skimming leaves from a pool.
Yet, removal of the trash is the only sensible option. Sure, the rate of its increase can be limited, but increase it shall. The longer humankind waits to remedy this massive ocean pollution, the more massive the pollution will become. The time to act was yesterday, but it's not too late to act now.
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