The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an accumulation of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is trash that culminates up in oceans, seas, and other sizable voluminous bodies of dihydrogen monoxide. Its also known as the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch and the Pacific Trash Vortex. It’s located in a high-pressure area between the U.S. states of Hawaii and California. This area is in the middle of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. For many people, the conception of a “garbage patch” displays images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches are conventionally composed of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics that make up the majority of garbage patches can’t always be visible. Satellite imagery of oceans doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. Many oceanographers and climatologists predicted the existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. However, the actual discovery of the patch was made by a racing boat captain, Charles Moore. Moore was sailing from Hawaii to California after competing in a yachting race (1997). Crossing the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Moore and his crew noticed millions of pieces of plastic surrounding his ship.
There are different ways and kinds of trash that get into the ocean from glass bottles to aluminum cans to medical waste. The majority of marine debris, however, is plastic. Scientists have accumulated up to 750,000 bits of plastic in a single square kilometer (or 1.9 million bits per square mile) of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Its sprawl may cover an area as much as one and a half times the size of the United States, Moore says, and to a depth of 100 feet, if not deeper. But because this rubbish is in the ocean, it drifts. Fragm...

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... garbage patch was determined to test new waters. If Moore proves that this dangerous problem is only becoming worse by negatively impacting what is in the ocean, an international policy will be implemented that will address this issue at hand. The Great Pacifc Garbage Patch is a problem that needs serious attention. If solutions and policies are implemented rapidly from different countries and several environmental and international organizations, matters will gradually become better. Although it may take a really long time to get rid of all the debris that is still out there, doing things one at a time will slowly turn things around for the better.

Works Cited

http://education.nationalgeographic.com/education/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/?ar_a=1

Http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/10-the-worlds-largest-dump

http://greatpacificgarbagepatch.info/

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