Pacific 'rubbish Superhighway' Going Unnoticed

[mrmoshe]

Pacific 'rubbish superhighway' going unnoticed

A vast rubbish dump, which covers an area bigger than Australia, is floating in the Pacific Ocean and research shows it is growing bigger.

The rubbish collects in one area because of a clockwise trade wind that circulates around the Pacific rim.

In his Tasmanian-built research vessel, Captain Charles Moore has just returned from a trip through the plastic stew floating between Hawaii and San Francisco.

"Toothbrushes are quite common, plastic bags are quite common, soap bottles are quite common, we've been finding a good many umbrella handles, minus the umbrella," he said.

"We find toolboxes, and oddly enough an item that seems to be quite prevalent now is plastic hard hats. I found one upside down with fish living in the upturned helmet."

The rubbish patch is extremely remote - it takes a week to reach it in a boat.

Captain Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, says the eastern part of what is labelled the "Pacific Garbage Patch" is joined by a rubbish superhighway to a western collection of debris off Japan.

"We're talking about an area larger than the continent of Australia," he said.

Captain Moore says the marine debris between Hawaii and California contains 40 times more plastic than plankton.

"The currents make the identifiable plastic come mostly from Asia, because it arrives rather quickly, whereas the North American debris takes over five years in some cases to get to this garbage patch," he said.

"In that period of time it's broken into bits, and we can't see any writing on it, so we can't trace it back to the United States.

"It's certainly true that all the countries bordering the Pacific contribute to this garbage patch."

Global effort

He says the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was mounting a clean-up effort to rid the ocean of "extremely destructive" nets.

"It's like rolling a giant mesh bowling ball against the coral reef when they hit land, and the waves push them across and it rips out all the coral and tangles the endangered monk seal - the only tropical seal," he added.

Dr Holly Bamford is the director of the marine debris program at the NOAA.

She says the NOAA is considering flying unmanned aircraft over the oceanic rubbish dump to collect more data.

"What these vehicles can do is they can be launched from platforms of vessels, and they can skim pretty close to the surface of the water," she said.

"Once it detects an anomaly, which means if it detects something on the ocean surface, it would record that, and then that would come back to the vessel."

Because the floating landfill lies in international waters, there is not a lot of political will to attempt a massive clean-up.

[Basserman]

some one is late for april fools i think

the proof lays here

[Davemmm]

Not sure Snopes has actually discounted that one fully. They talk about a "condom reef" whereas this article is simply about rubbish as a whole. The rubbish one does sound a little bit plausible.

Dave

[mrsswordfisherman]

I am sure you will find Mallacoota Pete's post has been validated

Cheers mrsswordfisherman

[Richie]

It is certainly originates on a site I would trust. http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/01/2079239.htm

[mrmoshe]

Well..it was filed by Kim Landers...The Australian ABC's North American correspondent, where I found it.

You would hope she checked the story out thoroughly.

Here is the original story.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/01/2079239.htm

I notice the San Francisco Chronicle also did a story:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...0/MNT5T1NER.DTL

The condom one is a definite old Furphy...I believe this one though.

Cheers,

Pete.

[Basserman]

a floating island of rubbish that is as big as australia and yet there are no pics or other reports or yet alone any other new or media covergae

sure it was in the repitable newspaper and more than likely gotten from some sorce but how often has the media got things wrong

the condom one was also published in a news paper with all the facts yet you don't belive that one

i'm telling you now that it wouldn't be that easy to hide a rubbish pile in the sea that covers the area of australia and even if the ships aren't running into it it sure as hell would be picked up from space

hell the great barrier reef is seen from space and thats a hell lot smaller than australia

A vast rubbish dump, which covers an area bigger than Australia, is floating in the Pacific Ocean and research shows it is growing bigger.

[mrmoshe]

I found this doing some Googling:

Have a look at the links in here for eaxample pics ...it sort of explains why

you can't "see" it.

The Oyster Garter

Why there are no pictures of the North Pacific Trash Gyre

A lot of folks over on Digg were very skeptical of the existence of the North Pacific Trash Gyre. They want to know: why are there no photos of floating heaps of trash? Why can’t you see the giant trash island the size of Texas on Google Earth?

When I learned of the trash gyre, I was equally skeptical, due to common misconceptions that get perpetuated in mainstream media articles. The most common misconception is that the trash pile is like an island, or a dense pile like this one in San Diego Harbor. It’s not packed in as tight as that - it’s more like a dense collection of tiny floating pieces of plastic, most of which are not on the surface. A big container ship or naval vessel going through there would probably not notice much out of the ordinary - after all, there is some degree of plastic trash floating on the surface all over the world.

To really get a sense of how much plastic is in there, you have to do a trawl, which entails dragging a net with a bucket on the end behind your boat. Here’s a photo of a bongo trawl taken off of southern California. (Thanks, Barbeau lab! SIO power!) And here’s a photo of what a normal bongo trawl should produce - lots of zooplankton, a few invertebrates, and the occasional small fish.

Now, contrast this with the results of a trawl from the North Pacific Gyre. Here’s the bongo net being hauled up - see how the ocean looks normal? But the contents - plastic, plastic, and more plastic.* When all that plastic collects somewhere, you get beaches like this one in the NW Hawaiian Islands.

For this reason, the trash gyre would be very, very hard to clean up. The plastic is so small, and so scattered, that it would take high-intensity trawling similar to that for shrimp. And shrimp trawling kills 10 pounds of non-targeted life (sharks, turtles, fish, you name it) for every pound of shrimp gathered. (Yes, Forrest Gump lied to you - for some reason they didn’t want drowned turtles next to Tom Hank’s angelic self.) The mortality caused by trying to remove all the trash in the gyre would probably be similar. We’re just going to have to live with it and try to prevent it from getting any bigger.

Some of these results are from manta trawls intead of bongos - it’s just a differently shaped net.

_______________________________________________________________

One link in that above article has the ORV Aguilta's voyage they just did, referred to in the original news article.

Take a look at This

Read the blog of the voyage.

It also has pictures of what they dredged up.

Cheers,

Pete.

[Basserman]

i have no dout that there is plastic in the ocean and too much for comfort at that what i'm discounting are some of the facts like the size of it

i have looked at the ALGALITA site and other reports i have found pertainine to CATP Charles Moore and none of the reports ever stated anything like the size of australia

now as i said i have no douts there are all sort of things that shouldn't be there with rope being the worst of the worst closely followed by plastic bags and there are loads of reports about micro sized plastic and in fact sadly alot of it now makes up a percentage of grains on many beaches

the biggets thing is the size and some of the other things in the report but hey in the end even a bad bit of pubishing is good if it brings some of this info to the lime light