really outta be ashamed of ourselves.Every single damn one of us.
The Garbage Patch is located at a natural collecting point at the center of a set of revolving currents called the North Pacific Gyre. The middle of the Gyre is more of a meteorological phenomenon than an actual place: a consistent high-pressure zone north of the Hawaiian Islands that, combined with the extremely weak currents, helps keep the ocean surface as placid as lake water.
Flotsam has been sucked into this area from the encircling currents for as long as the Pacific's existed, but up until the last century this process ended with the refuse safely biodegrading and being reabsorbed into the food chain as nutrients. With the advent of plastics, however, the Garbage Patch has transformed from a fertile feeding ground to the oceanic equivalent of a desert. And a particularly crap-strewn desert at that.
We chartered a trip through the middle of the mess with Capt. Charles Moore of the Oceanographic Research Vessel Alguita. Capt. Moore is credited with discovering the Patch in its present, trash-choked state, and at the time was one of the few people studying the extent and effect of the pollution.
A voyage into the center of the Gyre took eight days of round-the-clock sailing on a 50-foot catamaran with a crew of six (including VBS's three-man filming team).
The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.
If one were to travel far enough in the Pacific Ocean, one might eventually end up in what is commonly referred to as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch“. Scientifically, the area is known as the North Pacific Gyre, a swirling vortex of under-ocean currents that come together and keep the ocean water from going anywhere but there.
Oceanographers are saying that the area is nearly twice as large as the continental United States.
COMMENTS
Oh my gosh! Amazing and disgusting.
The garbage patch lead me to think this was going to have garbage pale kids in it. damn it.
I cannot even describe this...see for yourselves.
Are you ready?
COMMENTS
It's sickening, horrifying; I spent the morning waiting to see what would wash up on the Oregon coast and then before I logged off for a break I actually looked up the IRIS Seismic Monitor
http://www.iris.edu/seismon/
It brings a touch of perspective, with the earthquake activity lately all the signs were there, to me it looks like the plate was raring for a shift.
My heart goes out to all the families and those left behind to try to rebuild.
speechless... ):
No its not and it will get worse until they get the message...if you look closely at the footage you will see Sushi with a finger in the air.
COMMENTS
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moonkissed
23:02 Mar 12 2011
when he started talking about the difficulties to reconfigure society and gave an example of the plastic chair he was sitting in; I looked around my room...plastic in the computer, the keyboard, basically all over the desk. Chair made with synthetic fibers; sewn and held togethor largely by plastic. It's like in everything including our cars. It's absolutely terrible!
atyourwindow
23:33 Mar 12 2011
yeah but that might someday become a plastic mine, most of it could be recycled as for the fish eating it ...dont eat seafood, while i agree its a mess there notice no real solution was given by the people complaining, american's are consumers and will continue to consume products made of plastic untill a more "green" substance is invented to replace it.