The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: A Toilet Bowl of Plastic
By Alyssa Ladrillono
Ever had a plastic bag accidentally fly out of your car while driving? Or missed when you tried to throw something into a trash can or recycling bin but never picked it back up? Chances are that piece of plastic ended up in the ocean, even if you live nowhere near it. Great amounts of marine debris is spread throughout the entire North Pacific Ocean. We call this the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. To get an idea of how vast the patch is, scientists have estimated that it has a surface area covering around 1.6 million square kilometers, keeping in mind that the patch has different densities in different areas, which is approximately more than twice the size of the state of Texas. There is an estimated total of 1.8 trillion plastic pieces and its total mass is around 100,000 tonnes. While scientists came to a middle ground of estimating that there were around 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, in reality, it may range from 1.1 to 3.6 trillion plastic pieces. The ocean debris has gathered over the years through wind and current patterns which has kept the bundle of plastic from dispersing out of the North Equatorial.
There Are Different Types of Plastic Pieces in the Patch
The GPGP contains many different sizes of plastics. The different plastic pieces are categorized into four classifications; microplastics (0.05 cm - 0.5 cm), mesoplastics (0.5 cm - 5 cm), macroplastics (5 cm - 50 cm), and megaplastics (50+ cm). The Ocean Cleanup volunteers who collected the plastics then categorized them by type; type H- hard plastic, plastic sheet or film, type N- plastic lines, ropes, and fishing nets, type P- pre-production plastics (cylinders, spheres or disks), and type F- fragments made of foamed materials.
Many can argue about which size of plastic is the most dangerous. In reality, any type of plastic is just as harmful as another. Starting off with microplastics, most are difficult to see to the naked eye which makes them prone to be digested by many marine animals and birds foraging for food at the ocean’s surface. They are also very difficult to clean up and make the water look like cloudy soup, some even sinking to the ocean floor getting buried in the sand. Mesoplastics, macroplastics, and megaplastics are much easier to be seen and recognized, and are therefore easier to clean up. However, if they remain in the water and exposed to the sun’s UV rays, they will eventually convert to microplastics. The process of these larger plastic pieces turning into microplastics is when they are constantly exposed to UV rays from the sun and eventually break down into smaller and smaller pieces.
How does this plastic pollution affect our wildlife, marine life, and the human race?
According to the Ocean Cleanup organization, “studies have shown that about 700 species have encountered marine debris, and 92% of these interactions are with plastic. 17% of the species affected by plastic are on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) Red List of Threatened Species.”
Wildlife
The GPGP greatly affects our bird population as they forage for food. As birds migrate and are in search of food, they rely on eating the smaller fish along the ocean’s surface, but highly often mistake plastic for food. The colors of the plastic garbage is what fools birds into making it look like a yummy meal that leaves them unknowing of the harmful materials in their bodies.
Marine Life
The GPGP has affected and still is affecting our marine life in many ways. One way is through digestion. Local or migrating marine animals do not see the patch as a big pile of plastic pollution, but as a big pile of food. The plastic will either cause them to choke and suffocate them if a bit larger in size or eventually build up in their stomach, causing them to never properly digest it. When these animals eat plastic, it is indigestible and continues to stay in their system, which causes them to eat less and therefore obtain less and less energy, eventually resulting in a very painful death. As if this was not bad enough, scientists of the Ocean Cleanup found that 84% of the plastic debris in the GPGP contained at least one Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxic (PBT) chemical. PBT chemicals are pollutants that can gather in the animal’s body, up to the point where it can be damaging to them and the entire food web. Another way marine life is deeply affected is through entanglement. Since the GPGP has such a large mass and is spread throughout such a large area, its dimensions do not only spread through length and width but also through volume, meaning the plastic in the patch does not just float on the surface but also goes deep in the water. Because of this, migrating and local marine animals trying to pass through very often get caught in the debris, more specifically fishing nets. Fishing nets make up 46% of the mass of the garbage patch. Once the animals get caught in the nets, most of the time they cannot escape and frequently die. The discarded nets that marine animals often interact with are known as ghost nets. According to scientists of many sources such as World Wildlife and Surfer Today, ghost nets are simply fishing nets that have been discarded or lost by fishing vessels. Many scientists have noticed that the ghost nets appear to be nearly invisible in the cloudy soup that is the GPGP, therefore making the nets difficult for the animals to avoid.
Humans
The GPGP influences human health, causes many financial problems to the economy, and results in inconvenience to ships trying to travel. The way the patch affects human health is how it impacts the human food chain. The food chain is altered when smaller organisms consume plastic from the mass, and as it travels along, it will then get consumed by other organisms until it is finally caught by a fisherman and brought to the people to eat. Although people may not physically see the plastic in their food, the microplastics and its harmful chemicals very well do exist to where we just do not realize its presence. Another way humans are affected by the GPGP is how it attacks the economy. The plastic buildup has become so large and so severe that it has gotten to be very costly in efforts to clean it up. Despite the government’s lack of efforts in trying to clean up the mass, the few cleanup crews that are sent out require high costs for equipment and teams that the government feels is not a main priority. One last way humans are affected, particularly those traveling overseas, is how it is such an inconvenience due to its gigantic size. Sea travelers have to plan accordingly to how they will get around the insane patch because if they come too close, plastic could become entangled in propellers leaving them stranded.
How Can You as an Individual Help Reduce the Amount of Pollution In the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?
There are many ways you can help reduce the amount of plastic pollution in the patch but the most obvious one being to reduce the use of single use plastics. Some single use plastics that you could easily replace are metal straws, reusable cups, reusable containers, reusable bags, buying in bulk, and so many endless items.
Is There a Fix?
In order to efficiently and greatly reduce the amount of pollution in the GPGP, it would require a multi-step solution. The first step would be to cut off the source of where the plastic is coming from, its main source being rivers. Most plastic floats at the surface until an external force pushes it down, so if we set up a small yet effective, non-invasive contraption that floated across rivers by its width, it would catch the plastic and prevent it from spreading to the ocean. Then after a few days, a cleanup crew would retrieve the trash that was stopped by the contraption.
Now that we have a plan to stop the spread of plastic, we still have to do something about the plastic that is already in the patch. This will consist of many cleanup crews to go out on boats and retrieve the plastic out of the ocean. It will take up lots of time and will not be cleaned up all in one outing but as long as we are leaving it better than we found it, that is a success!
The final step is just as crucial as the rest. Think about this. Even if we were able to retrieve all of the plastic from the patch, it would just sit on land in a landfill. One of the most common ways to get rid of landfills is to burn the material. However, when plastic is burned, all of its harmful chemicals are released into the air which is just as toxic as leaving the plastic in the patch and also increases carbon emissions. Instead, we could reuse the plastic and turn it into something people would use. For example, the organization 4Ocean makes bracelets that are made 100% out of the plastic they collect from the ocean and are best sellers. Organizations like 4Ocean are especially amazing because they use the funds they make from their bracelets to fund their cleanups, and the more cleanups they do, the more bracelets they are able to make and bring in a higher profit. Click on the image below to shop 4Ocean bracelets and help clean up our oceans!
Fun Facts!
The patch was discovered by oceanographer and boat captain Charles Moore
Fishing nets account for around 45% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The GPGP is just one of 5 similar patches ( patch 1= GPGP)
Once plastic enters the patch, it is unlikely to ever escape
Plastic will account for roughly 74% of the diet of sea turtles that enter the area
It contains plastic that is decades old
Works Cited
David. “10 Interesting Facts About the Great Pacific Garbage Patch .” Eradicate Plastic - Join the Fight against Single-Use Plastics, Eradicate Plastic, 6 Apr. 2019, eradicateplastic.com/10-interesting-facts-about-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch/.
Hancock, Lorin. “Our Oceans Are Haunted by Ghost Nets: Why That's Scary and What We Can Do.” WWF, World Wildlife Fund, 25 June 2019, www.worldwildlife.org/stories/our-oceans-are-haunted-by-ghost-nets-why-that-s-scary-and-what-we-can-do--23.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “What Is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?” NOAA's National Ocean Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, 22 Apr. 2010, oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html.
Sparkle Motion/Flickr. “Bird With Stomach Full of Man-Made Plastic.” IFL Science, www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/seabirds-are-eating-plastic-litter-our-oceans-not-only-where-you-d-expect/.
“The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Growing Rapidly.” Greener Printer, 27 Mar. 2018, www.greenerprinter.com/blog/index.php/2018/03/27/gpgp-growing-rapidly/graph/.
“The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” The Ocean Cleanup, 11 Feb. 2020, theoceancleanup.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/.
TheOceanCleanup. “The Ocean Cleanup Technology Explained | System 001 | Cleaning Oceans.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 July 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1EAeNdTFHU.
“What Are Ghost Nets?” Surfertoday, Surfertoday, www.surfertoday.com/environment/what-are-ghost-nets.
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