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Our Plastic Seas
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Here's a rather disturbing article.
The LA Times has been running a series on our horribly polluted oceans. While it's hardly news that our oceans, gasp!, are polluted, the sobering doomsayer articles are rife with runaway algae, toxic bacteria, red tides, acidic seawater, disappearing species, deformed offspring, and apocalyptic forecasts.
Something I found most fascinating, however, are the so-called Garbage Patches. Garbage Patches (also known as a garbage gyre) are where the ocean currents take most of the plastics and floatable trash dumped into our oceans. These swirling masses literally trap garbage for decades.
Two such patches plague the Pacific Ocean; the Western Garbage Patch south of Japan and the Eastern Garbage Patch off the west coast of the United States. The Eastern Garbage Patch is twice the size of Texas.
Let me just reiterate that: TWICE THE SIZE OF TEXAS!
Since plastic can take more than 100 years to break down in the ocean, the LA Times points out that every bit of plastic that has found its way into the ocean in the last fifty years (indeed since plastic itself was invented) is still floating out there--including that Frisbee you lost at the beach in 1972.
This does not bode well for those who rely on the ocean to survive. Scientists who recently cut open the stomach of a baby albatross on Midway Atoll discovered within its stomach, "a collection of red, blue and orange bottle caps, a black spray nozzle, part of a green comb, a white golf tee and a clump of tiny dark squid beaks ensnared in a tangle of fishing line."
Hardly the stuff of albatross dreams.
There really is no other way to end this post than with the following exclamation which pretty much sums up the situation: Ugh!!!
Filed under: Activism, Scuba Diving
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
blah blah Aug 8th 2006 8:32PM
its sad that the ocean is polluted but what is even more sad is that the location of these garbage patches are "known" and nobody does a damn thing about it...
CHUCK HARRIS Aug 8th 2006 8:36PM
WHY DON'T WE DESIGN A MACHINE AND SCOOP IT UP?
wow Aug 8th 2006 8:58PM
TWICE THE SIZE OF TEXAS!! WOW!! Hopefully this article will get a 'clean up' effort ignited. Plastic companies should get involved so that they can recycle for their own benefit.
Marie Aug 8th 2006 9:10PM
We should go back to Glass, the kind that requires a deposit. Does anyone remember those? You couldn't get your deposit back until you brought the bottles back in. This was in the 70's and then they stopped.
It seems like the more advanced we get the worse things get.
Jacqueline Aug 8th 2006 9:14PM
WHAT CAN I, MYSELF, DO TO HELP? I'LL HELP IF POSSIBLE. DOES ANYONE KNOW?
David Darnold Aug 8th 2006 9:15PM
as I have said for years when I was in the soft drink business. Why did we stop with returnible bottling, plastic was not the answer. Now look what we have done to our childrens children. Bottling plants all over the country have shut down. and look what has happened to our ecolistic system.
CHUCK HARRIS Aug 8th 2006 9:16PM
WHY DON'T WE DESIGN A MACHINE AND SCOOP IT UP?
Laura Aug 8th 2006 9:22PM
If all that crap was in the stomach of a BABY albatross can you imagine what must be in an adult bird? Such a sad thing that no one cares enough about this to do something. If it's all right there together, even as large a mass as it is, there has to be something,some way to at least begin to clean it up.
Laura Aug 8th 2006 9:32PM
It all begins with us. One person CAN make a difference. It's simple.....don't throw anything into our waterways...nothing. Seems like such a small thing but multiply that by 295 million. That's a lot of bottle caps.
Indivually, maybe we can't clean up what's already there but we CAN stop adding to it.
Vernon Swygert Aug 8th 2006 9:39PM
The waste around Key West I saw up close several years ago was so very dissapointing that it blew my experience of the small plane view I had coming in. I wish it were not so.
Elaine Aug 8th 2006 9:40PM
PLEASE GET OUT THERE AND HELP CLEAN UP THE BEACHES. WALK THE BEACH WITH A BAG. IF YOU ARE FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO BE OUT ON A BOAT, YOU BE THE ADVOCATE FOR COLLECTING GARBAGE AND TAKING IT BACK---NOT DUMPING IT!!!!!!
Brenda Walton Aug 8th 2006 9:53PM
I am now 45 years old. I remember the days of having my children. (3) My biggest fear was that their children would grow up with sludge for oceans, polluted and trashed. Now here it is, I have two grandchildren whom get to live life with polluted oceans, global warming, etc, etc. It is so sad that the human race only cares about making money and spending money and without a thought of what is happening to our Mother Earth! WE ALL NEED TO DO SOMETHING NOW!
Tessa Ray Aug 8th 2006 9:59PM
Respect the beach, God's a green,support www.surfrider.org. There are chapters in every state. The ocean is life-giving, we can change this, but we need to start now. Go see Al Gore's movie--AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
Cheryl Aug 8th 2006 10:02PM
It's depressing, and every time there's a flood of any sort, all of the trash from the streets of the flooded areas goes running right into the water. Even more sobering is the fact that just about every beach, creek, river, lake, and ocean has its share of litter and pollutants. There are a lot of humans, and they are making their mark, but not in a good way.
Every bottle thrown onto the ground, every piece of trash thrown into a creek is a slap in the face to nature. We need to clean up the mess that we made, and we need to change our society's ways so that people can become more responsible for their actions.
Rachael Aug 8th 2006 10:07PM
I think it's really sad that everybody's polluting and no one seems to care. I was just telling my little sister (because we were swimming at a beach to stop throwing trash in there and i even picked it up aftter her. People have to start being more caring we're ruining the Earth SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!!!
Darling Douglas Aug 8th 2006 10:09PM
I'm not sure if it is good it all goes to one place or if it is better to have it minutely spreadout over the vast ocean. At least we know where it is and can cleanup and recycle the plastic.
I think we need to switch to natural substances like carbon that can replace plastic.
Jim Aug 8th 2006 10:22PM
I'm not positive, but don't "we" intentionally dump tons of garbage in the oceans every year? What did "they" think would happen to it?
Bruce Aug 8th 2006 10:22PM
WHAT in the world are you people so upset about??!! When Thor Hyerdale made his second voyage way back when, (qv), he made note of that, and was ignored. I live in Naples Florida... the bay has almost constant red tides, is polluted to boot, and most of the beaches are gone from hurricanes over the past two years. NONE of which you will be told as "they" want your dollars, which you gladly seem to spend just for the "prestige" of being in a (ahem) haute area. I could go on, but I'll spare you the tirade... not that you'll pay any attention... remember, the attention span of the average American is 20 seconds and there seems... NO! there ARE a lot of "average" Americans out there. Don't bother answering this... I stumbled across this site while surfing the net and won't be back. Which is why the planet is a toilet. But look on the bright side... in a couple of hundred years, cockroacked will have a flourishing civilization... with NO taxes! All y'all have a nice day... while all y'all can still breathe.
Katherine Day Aug 8th 2006 10:29PM
Are you aware that many of these plastics outgas a substance which, in the human body, is turned into estrogen? This may be part of what accounts for the obesity epidemic, for the fact that our kids are coming into puberty two years earlier now than just 50 years ago, that one in seven women in the US gets breast cancer, that men have about 1/2 as many viable sperm per ejaculate as they did in WWI, resulting in the fact that one in six couples in the US is involuntarily infertile! Yes, this is a problem of huge proportions and a public health crisis. Nobody seems to want to do anything about it, however.
Katherine Day
Amanda Adeniyi Aug 8th 2006 10:34PM
that is so so so sad. The worst part of it all is that they know exactly where these "garbage patches" are and still they remain in that same location expanding over the years. How on this wide earth can a person of authority know where these are and not do a damn thing about it?