Scientists Confirm Another Garbage Patch in The Ocean

Student: Jacob Beaver Date: July 15, 2017 Scientists Have Confirmed That There Is Another Garbage Patch in The Ocean Scientists have confirmed that there is yet another garbage patch in the ocean. This time, it is in a remote part of the South Pacific. In contrast to the wellknown patch in the northern Pacific Ocean, which has been a worldwide symbol of pollution for a long time, the new patch is in an area that hasn't been studied much before. The high degree of plastic pollution was uncovered by captain Charles Moore and his team of volunteer researchers on a six-month voyage: “We discovered tremendous quantities of plastic. My initial impression is that our samples compared to what we were seeing in the North Pacific in 2007, so it’s about ten years behind,” said Moore, who has worked to raise awareness about plastic pollution since he stumbled across the North Pacific patch while captaining a racing yacht in the 1990s. Moore says the southern patch could be as big as a million square kilometers, 1.5 times the size of Texas. A new patch is made by an unexplored gyre This kind of trash can get stuck in any of the ocean's five main gyres and turn into a garbage patch. But while a lot is known about the famous patch in the North Pacific and, to a lesser extent, its counterpart in the North Atlantic, not much is known about how plastic builds up in the other gyres. That means that the news about the patch in the South Pacific is very useful for other scientists, such as Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at Utrecht University. He just started a big project to find out where the plastic is in the ocean. It's hard to find out much about plastic in the South Pacific. "Not many people go there, and it hasn't been studied very well," he said. "I was excited to see Charles' project because we need observations like these to help us shape our models." Moore's group is the second to get samples of plastic trash in the South Pacific Gyre. Marcus Eriksen, a marine pollution researcher, led the first one. He crossed the gyre in a single transect in 2011 and then wrote up his results. Larsen told us, "At that time I saw very little debris." People think that tens of millions of tons more plastic have made their way into the oceans since then. Moore also says that the uneven distribution of plastic in the ocean is one reason why he found more trash on his most recent trip. One trawl might not find much because it missed the zones with the most trash, while the next one might find a lot of trash because it hit one. To find out how bad the pollution really was, a long research trip that lasted several months and went all over a remote area off the coasts of Chile and Peru was needed. Millions of plastic particles per square kilometer The South Pacific "garbage patch" is mostly made up of very small pieces of plastic, about the size of rice grains. The term "garbage patch" usually makes people think of floating bottles and grocery bags. This could mean that the plastic in the South Pacific has been there longer than the trash in the more famous patch, which will also break up in the end. Moore said, "We found a few bigger things, like a buoy and some fishing gear, but most of it was broken up." Because fishing is so popular in the Southern Hemisphere, a lot of plastic from fishing gear ends up here. Moore said, "We haven't done lab tests yet, but based on what I've seen, a huge area of the South Pacific has millions of plastic particles per square kilometer." It's almost impossible to get rid of the tiny pieces of plastic once they get into the gyre. The best way to stop them is to stop them where they start, as soon as possible. He said, "Gone are the silly ideas that putting nets in the ocean will solve the problem." "This cloud of microplastics goes up and down and side to side. It looks more like smog than a patch. We're making great progress in getting rid of smog over our cities by stopping the source. The same needs to be done for our seas. A need to tell everyone right away Moore and his team got back from their trip in early May and are now cleaning and processing their samples so they can look at the plastic more closely. They won't be able to publish the results for a while because the plastic trash they collected at sea needs to be carefully weighed and analyzed, but Moore wants to share his first thoughts right now. He said, "I feel like an ambassador because I spent so much time there." "We need to get the word out about this area quickly because it's being destroyed at a fantastically fast rate." A lot of the ocean hasn't been explored yet, so we'll never have baseline data from before plastic was used.