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
ocean or littering the ocean floor Of all the debris in garbage patches 90 percent is plastic in all shapes and sizes 8 Much of this consists of micro plastics tiny pieces of plastic less than 0 2 inches 5 mm in size 9 This is because plastic does not biodegrade but simply breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces which accumulate over time THE SOURCE Most of the trash that makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not specifically dumped into the ocean Approximately 80 percent of all marine debris is from land-based sources 10 It is generated by littering or careless disposal of trash along shorelines and inland Litter can make its way into storm drains which then carry the debris into waterways and out to sea by currents Tsunami debris likewise contributes to garbage in the ocean The 2011 Japanese tsunami swept tens of thousands of pounds of material into the water Marine debris is also derived from ocean-based sources including boats offshore oil rigs and ships Of the ocean-based debris much of it is in the form of discarded fishing nets and lines Cargo ships have been known to lose containers at sea 12 OTHER GARBAGE PATCHES The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not the only garbage patch in Earth’s oceans it is just the most notorious There are other places in the oceans where currents converge in much the same manner as in the North Pacific Ocean In the Atlantic Ocean for example the North Atlantic subtropical convergence zone consists of two gyres that have formed the Atlantic Garbage Patch Located several hundred miles east of North America the patch traps marine debris in its currents Researchers studying the Atlantic patch trawled the surface of the ocean and found more than 520,000 bits of trash per square mile 2 59 sq km 11 A patch was also discovered in the Indian Ocean approximately halfway between Australia and Africa
Annually only approximately 10 percent of plastics are recycled The rest end up in places such as landfills and oceans 13
