A lot of people hear the word patch and they immediately think of almost like a blanket of trash that can easily be scooped up but actually these areas are always moving and changing with the currents and it’s mostly these tiny plastics that you can’t immediately see with the naked eye 4 Dianna Parker NOAA Marine Debris Program June 2014 TRAPPED IN ARCTIC ICE Ocean currents have taken debris as far as the Arctic where micro plastics have been found frozen in the ice Recent studies of the ice have found hundreds of particles trapped in 35 cubic feet 1 cu m This is a much greater concentration of plastic than in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Moreover as the ice melts it releases the plastics back into the ocean Researchers from Dartmouth College estimated that 1 trillion bits of micro plastics could be freed from the ice by 2024 5 These rotating currents called gyres are like giant whirlpools that concentrate the debris in one area The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is actually composed of two separate patches the Eastern Garbage Patch and the Western Garbage Patch The eastern patch is located between Hawaii and the mainland United States while the western patch is off the coast of Japan These two patches are connected by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre a large area of 7 7 million square miles 20 million sq km where several Pacific currents interact 3 In this convergence zone where winds from different areas meet the massive circular current moves in a clockwise direction Over the span of years it can take debris from Japan to the United States and back again No one knows exactly the size of the garbage patch in the Pacific It is important to understand that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not an island or a raft of trash bound together nor is it confined to a specific point It is simply an area where debris is concentrated and freely floating through the ocean Further it is not visible from the air or by satellite because most of the debris is below the surface of the water and much of the collection is made up of micro debris Often people 8
North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone Western Garbage Patch California Eastern Garbage Patch or N Pacific subtropical high North Equatorial Wind and waves help spread garbage over large areas in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch though little of it can be seen by the naked eye
Parts of the North Pacific subtropical high are so calm that mariners called the area the horse latitudes 7 If sailors were caught in the stagnant currents with low winds they often had to dump horses or other livestock overboard to lighten their load and conserve fresh drinking water until the winds increased enough to resume sailing traveling through the garbage patch cannot see the scale of the collection Captain Charles Moore likened the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to a bowl of soup It was and is a thin plastic soup a soup lightly seasoned with plastic flakes bulked out here and there with dumplings buoys net clumps floats crates and other macro debris 6 Other types of marine debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and other garbage patches around the world include plastic bags rubber tires paper metals derelict fishing gear abandoned ships Styrofoam textiles and more These items can be found on the surface of the Trash dumped into the ocean far from land eventually makes its way to beaches and shorelines 11
