The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Plastic soup for you?
You might have heard of the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes that ring the Pacific Ocean from New Zealand up north along Philippines and Japan to Alaska and then back down south towards Mexico and Chile. You might not have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, however. As much as the Ring of Fire is a natural phenomenon is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch a man-made phenomenon. Also known as the Pacific Trash Vortex, it is a "gyre of marine litter" in the north Pacific Ocean with "extremely high concentrations of... plastics, chemical sludge and other debris".
While I was generally aware of how many people use the oceans as a dumping ground, I was not aware of the extent of the pollution of our oceans until I chanced upon these photos of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. While the photos did not capture the extent of the pollution in terms of area affected, it captured the pollution in terms of the complexity as well as the severity of it. Looking at the plastic soup (photo featured) that was sampled from the waters there, it shocks me and saddens me, because how on Earth are we going to clean up all these plastic debris, big and small?
I will not go into details of how the trash remains stuck in the ocean, but these two sites surftherenow.com and mindfully.org have some informational graphics that describe the situation. Mindfully.org has another article that shows an even more gruesome photo of the plastic contents ingested by an albatross when they recovered the remains of the bird.
What can you do? At very least, do not litter! Even if you litter on land, the litter can be washed into the drains that will eventually flow into the sea. Maybe in Singapore water going into the sea has to be processed to a minimum standard of cleanliness, but not so in many other countries. And of course, cut down on plastic usage... plastic is one of the worst things to dispose of because it just does not break down biologically, hence it will remain in the oceans or landfills for thousands of years. There has been a website dedicated to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, so you could take a look and get involved.
