The most famous floating trash is located between Hawaii and California and currently twice the size of Texas.
"The patch was discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore, a yachtsman who had sailed through a mishmash of floating plastic bottles and other debris on his way home to Los Angeles. It was named by Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a Seattle oceanographer known for his expertise in tracking ocean currents and the movement of cargo lost overboard, including rubber duck bath toys and Nike tennis shoes.
The patch is now the target of a $32 million cleanup campaign launched by a Dutch teenager, Boyan Slat, now 23, and head of the Ocean Cleanup, the organization he founded to do the job. Beyond those details, not much was known about the specific contents of the patch—until now.
Microplastics make up 94 percent of an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch. But that only amounts to eight percent of the total tonnage. As it turns out, of the 79,000 metric tons of plastic in the patch, most of it is abandoned fishing gear—not plastic bottles or packaging drawing headlines today.
A comprehensive new study by Slat’s team of scientists, published in Scientific Reports Thursday, concluded that the 79,000 tons was four to 16 times larger than has been previously estimated for the patch. The study also found that fishing nets account for 46 percent of the trash, with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing industry gear, including ropes, oyster spacers, eel traps, crates, and baskets. Scientists estimate that 20 percent of the debris is from the 2011 Japanese tsunami. "
Source: National Geographic
Cheers Boyan Slat @senseicat
I love it that a teenager took charge & decided to do something.
Today's teenagers are SO much smarter than I was!
(Great article. Thanks for the info)
That's not my experience where I'm from. Their tighter to their bro's then we were for sure. They have a unique outlook on life and the self entitlement is rampant. I WISH they were more like Boyan.
I guess culture too plays such a role in our young ones. Where I am from our youth are given every opportunity in the world and they throw it away. (not all obviously but the numbers are sad)
Conversely, give a busted, one sting guitar to a boy or girl from somewhere like CUBA and in a few months they can make the thing "talk"...
Not to take away from Boyan and the post though. That's great work!
That's just disgusting... what is the proposal for cleaning up this massive problem? What will they do with the trash in order to dispose of it? How can this problem be prevented in the future on a mass scale? Thanks so much for sharing!
Ivy
Did you know that a major contributor to plastic in the ocean are car tires. As we drive car tires get used and loose micro particles of plastic. With rain such particles get washed into rivers and eventually the ocean. According to a research paper such particles account for over 20% of the plastic in oceans.
The bad thing about this kind of plastic is that it is not visible to the human eyes. But it is there. And fish "eat" it. And we eat fish.
Change is urgently needed!!!
The day will come when Wall-E becomes a reality. Thanks @senseicat for bringing attention to this pressing issue.
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It hurts to upvote this because the topic is so sad (i did) When I learnt to dive my instructor told me there was more plastic in the oceans than on the land! So thankful for some of these innovative kids coming through, fingers crossed we can all start to make a difference.
good work my friend
Great post. I didn't know it was fishing gear and tsunami claimings . Media has just shown bottles/plastic mostly. Cheers to that young Mr.Slat for the clean-up.