Garbage

April 29, 2023

Last Thursday I came across an article in the back of the National & Local News section of my newspaper that reported on the variety of life forms taking over in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.   Marine animals that are normally only found in the coastal areas of the Pacific are growing and reproducing on the plastic debris found on the high seas.  Documentation of creatures living on this floating habitat was published in the British journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.  There were 484 separate marine organisms found on the debris, and 80% of those were species usually only found in coastal habitats.  The giant patch of floating trash is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

When I looked online, I found The Great Pacific garbage patch (also Pacific trash vortex and North Pacific Garbage Patch) is a whorl of marine debris particles located in the central North Pacific Ocean.  It is located roughly from 135°W to 155°W and 35°N to 42°N.  The collection of plastic and floating trash originates from the Pacific Rim, including countries in Asia, North America, and South America.  Despite the common public perception of the patch existing as giant islands of floating garbage, its low density of 3.1 cubic yards (4 particles per cubic meter) prevents detection by satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the area.  The patch is a widely dispersed area of suspended “fingernail-sized or smaller” particles in the upper water column known as microplastics.  Researchers from The Ocean Cleanup project claim the patch covers 620 thousand square miles (1.6 million square kilometers) and consists of 50–142 thousand short tons (45–129 thousand metric tons) of plastic as of 2018.  The same study found while microplastic dominate the area by count, 92% of the mass of the patch consists of larger objects which have not yet fragmented into microplastics.  Some of the plastic in the patch is over 50 years old and includes items (and fragments) like plastic lighters, toothbrushes, water bottles, pens, baby bottles, cell phones, plastic bags, and small plastic pellets (nurdles), along with fishing nets.  The garbage patch is believed to have increased 10-fold each decade since 1945.

Unknown to researchers until this latest study, the garbage patch is not the only thing growing.  Animals discovered in the patch include crustaceans, sea anemones, mollusks, and worms.  Species known to thrive in the open ocean were thriving on plastic garbage.  While these were not unexpected, the prominent diversity of coastal species was.  These species are living long enough to take hold and reproduce.  Sexual reproduction was evident in both the open water and coastal species.  Coastal species diversity was highest on the ropes and fishing nets that are often lost at sea and end up in the garbage patch.   

Thoughts:  There are at least five garbage patches in the world, with the other four located in the Southern Pacific, Indian, Northern Atlantic, and Southern Atlantic (i.e., the major oceans except the polar regions), but the Great Pacific patch holds the most plastic.  Research indicates the patch contains approximately six pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton.  These growing patches contribute to other environmental damage to marine ecosystems and species.  While the first synthetic polymer was invented in 1869 by John Wesley Hyatt, and the first fully synthetic plastic was invented by Leo Baekeland in 1907, plastic production in the US increased by 300% during World War II.  Plastic is now critical to our modern way of life.  This is like the rise of fossil fuels in the 20th century and the devastating effect it has had on the environment.  Alternatives exist for both that should be produced in non-destructive ways, and utilized as replacements.  Act for all.  Change is coming and it starts with you.