Continent-size toxic stew of plastic trash fouling swath of Pacific Ocean

Now this is scary...

SF Gate

The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.

The patch has been growing, along with ocean debris worldwide, tenfold every decade since the 1950s, said Chris Parry, public education program manager with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco.

Ocean current patterns may keep the flotsam stashed in a part of the world few will ever see, but the majority of its content is generated onshore, according to a report from Greenpeace last year titled "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans".

First of all - I really am yet again surprised what WE are doing to our Planet Earth, and especially to our oceans, which hold life for everyone. Sooner or later this shall come back like a boomerang from the past and hit us in the back of our neck so hard, that I do not think we shall ever get up.

Second - why the hell is this plastic debris in Pacific Ocean? As far as I know plastic IS recycable and it can be used again. And it comes from natural thing called OIL, which is supposed to be running low on global reserves - yet we throw away plenty of it.



[edit on 24/10/07 by Souljah]

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[edit on 24/10/2007 by Mirthful Me]

I guess its cheaper to just dump the trash in the sea instead of recycling it.

Yes, money corrupts peoples souls.

What's crazy about this coming out during the fires (maybe arson?) a little wag the dog going on? Seems likely to me, *they* don't want to bother cleaning up an OCEAN?! So, instead burn a state to get people to look the other way.

This story here, I don't know, who could you forward these things to? Anyone who trusts Congress is naive, dense or just plain dumb.



Down w/ Billary -- vote Ron Paul in 2008

reply to post by anhinga


As much as I agree with you, I can't take your side on a lot of your political views. I doubt that they would even care if we found this out. They definitely wouldn't go to the extreme of burning 300,000 square miles of inhabited San Diego. They just wouldn't make a big deal about it.

Regardless, what we're doing to our planet is absolutely disgusting. The more I hear, the more I disagree with humans being allowed to thrive freely.

Greenpeace? Well now i dont believe anyof this now....jk

This doesnt surprise me at all. I mean rubbish has got to go somewhere and its a sad reality that most of it from coastal areas ends up in the sea. I guess it all comes down to cost cutting.

PS- Down with greenpeace

Check this out:

Across the Pacific Ocean, Plastics, Plastics, Everywhere


Bottle caps and other plastic objects are visible inside the decomposed carcass of this Laysan albatross on Kure Atoll, which lies in a remote and virtually uninhabited region of the North Pacific. The bird probably mistook the plastics for food and ingested them while foraging for prey.



gCurrents in the North Pacific move in a clockwise spiral, or gyre, which tends to trap debris originating from sources along the North Pacific rim. Plastics and other waste have accumulated in the region, which includes the foraging areas of Pacific bird colonies, such as that of the Tern Island albatross, shown in blue, and that of the Guadalupe Island albatross, shown in green.

Trashing the Oceans


A. 1990 Running shoes spill
B. 2002 Garbage strip
C. 2000 Plastic bag spill
D. Shoes found
E. Eastern Garbage Patch: At the eye of the gyre, plastic reaches concentrations of a million pieces per square mile. Researchers have mapped a giant spill of bags and a mile-long strip of wind-driven garbage.
F. Caught in a gyre: Some of the plastic drifting in the North Pacific is swept to shore, like the thousands of Nike shoes that washed up in the Pacific Northwest. But much is trapped by calm winds and sluggish water within the North Pacific's loop of currents.

Just WOW!

So much CRAP in the oceans.

But who cares anyway, right?

As long as this CRAP is not in front of your house...

Sad really...



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[edit on 24/10/2007 by Mirthful Me]

What i want is for all that garbage to just float over to SF and pile its self all over the beaches, that would be a sight to see on the evening news

but really, that is odd how it just collects its self in such a small area. jsut goes to show though how much junk is really in our oceans. i wonder waht (or if) anything will be done about this, i sure hope some media attention is brought to it.

Originally posted by anhinga

What's crazy about this coming out during the fires (maybe arson?) a little wag the dog going on? Seems likely to me, *they* don't want to bother cleaning up an OCEAN?! So, instead burn a state to get people to look the other way.

This story here, I don't know, who could you forward these things to? Anyone who trusts Congress is naive, dense or just plain dumb.



Down w/ Billary -- vote Ron Paul in 2008

No, it's just a case that humans suck. Why do you have to tag everything "not what it seems" and throw skull and cross bones all over it.

It's loopy.

Something twice the size of Texas doesn't really qualify as being continent-sized - bit of sensationalism on the article's part there. Not that it makes the situation any better, mind you. I think someone with a sizable barge and lots of free time could figure out a way to make a buck or two off of this, though.

Odd. I did a quick search of this and could not find a single picture.

Originally posted by cavscout
Odd. I did a quick search of this and could not find a single picture.

WTF?

Those pictures I posted yesterday are now FORBIDDEN?

Hello?!?

Weird...

Just take of the end of the URL and end up with

www.mindfully.org...

and you can still access - it might just be direct links from this site because when I did the above i could access all the pics - there's 100's by the way and some good links

Originally posted by Souljah
Now this is scary...

SF Gate

The enormous stew

I love stew! mmmm......stew.......

Seriously tho. This is pretty disgusting. As a surfer I find it revolting.
Is there a way to pinpoint it so we can google earth it?
Remember when the NJ shoreline was awash in tons of medical waste? Used needles, surgical gloves, and human parts, I believe as well.
Beyond disgusting.

I think the google ad for Accelerade brand fruit, err color, beverage, in its little plastic bottle, to the right on this page, is just salt in the wound.

The shoreline at the bay in my coastal town looks like a garbage dump.

Every little piece of plastic goes somewhere.

Second - why the hell is this plastic debris in Pacific Ocean?

Wind, currents... poo flows down river.

Sri Oracle

The trash is flowing out that way, from local areas and collects there. Must be a way to clean it up?

Originally posted by Sri Oracle

Second - why the hell is this plastic debris in Pacific Ocean?

Wind, currents... poo flows down river.

I ment - why the hell is it not in a recycle planet?

As far as I know 50% of oil we in the west buy, goes to petro-chemical products such as plastics, fertilzers are other products, which are not gas for vehicles. And IF there is a terrible shortage of this natural resoruce - such a shortage, that certain countries have to be invaded - why the hell are people throwing away a resource, that CAN be recycled again and again?

Originally posted by DeadFlagBlues
Regardless, what we're doing to our planet is absolutely disgusting. The more I hear, the more I disagree with humans being allowed to thrive freely.

We regret to inform you, mankind perished because he was so focused on turning a profit, that he poisoned himself in the process.
All futhur evolution of man as a species has been cancelled.

Deadflag, that is a sad conclusion you speak of. The Earth is a beautiful gift that comes with responsibility. If we dont take care of her, she takes care of us, with the ultimatum being the extinction of mankind.

Take care of the Garden.

Peace

[edit on 12-11-2007 by HIFIGUY]

Images will not work if you link to them from here. Just copy and paste the link into a new browser tab/ window then all'll be good.

Sooner or later this shall come back like a boomerang from the past and hit us in the back of our neck so hard, that I do not think we shall ever get up.

LOL!

All of the rivers flowing to the ocean are carrying this garbage and it eventually reaches the gyre after untold time.

If you recycle your plastics you are doing more damage than you think.

The plastic is sent to a facility where it is melted down (burning fuel to do so) into tiny little pellets of various sizes, these pellets are shipped by train to various plastic factories to be reshaped into other things. From the recycling plant to the factory there is spillage in the millions of tons, one bead of plastic at a time.

These beads wash into the water system, then out to sea, where they fill the bellies of the fish, who are eaten by birds (if they don't die), who then die from plastic in their guts.

Walk a mile along any river in an urban area, count the basketballs you see in there, imagine how many the gyre has now....

How about coffee cups, doritos bags, and the like....

someday the ocean will look like Citarum

I saw this on TV last night, either the daily show or colbert repor I think. They said it was twice the size of texas

makes me wanna scream