Earth's Eighth Continent

Have a read of this story-its depressing to read,and shows just how slack we are at looking after our environment:

"Located in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii and measuring in at roughly twice the size of Texas, this elusive mass is home to hundreds of species of marine life and is constantly expanding. It has tripled in size since the middle of the 1990s and could grow tenfold in the next decade.

Although no official title has been given to the mass yet, a popular label thus far has been "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch."

As suggested by the name, the island is almost entirely comprises human-made trash. It currently weighs approximately 3.5 million tons with a concentration of 3.34 million pieces of garbage per square kilometer, 80 per cent of which is plastic.

Due to the Patch's location in the North Pacific Gyre, its growth is guaranteed to continue as this Africa-sized section of ocean spins in a vortex that effectively traps flotsam."

How disgusting is that?But wait-it gets worse...

"While the trash is in the ocean, it is doing what could be irreparable harm to sea life, the water it's in, and eventually humans.

Plastic resists biodegrading. Instead, a plastic shopping bag or pop bottle will photo-degrade over time, meaning that it will break down into smaller and smaller pieces but retain its original molecular composition.

The result is a great amount of fine plastic sand that resembles food to many creatures.

Unfortunately, the plastic cannot be digested, so sea birds or fish can eventually starve to death with a stomach full of plastic.

Even if the amount of plastic in a creature's body is not enough to block the passage of food, the small pellets act as sponges for several toxins, concentrating chemicals such as DDT to 1 million times the normal level.

This concentration then works its way up the food chain until a fish is served at our dinner table."

thetyee.ca...

The international community should get together on this one,and try to mop up the garbage-maybe using some modified trawlers,or the military naval engineers.
Maybe large plastic companies could help pay for the clean up?

Anyone got any ideas as to how to get this cleaned up?

www.mindfully.org...

[edit on 27-11-2007 by Silcone Synapse]

mod edit: changed quote tags to external quote tags.
Quote Reference (review link)

[edit on 6-12-2007 by UK Wizard]

I have heard about this on the boards here before. Does anyone know if there is an aerial photo of this somewhere?

This is certainly eye-brow raising stuff, the implications of the damage to the environment are terrifying.

Who knows?

In 20 years or so maybe there'll even be freakish mutant fish living in the bowels of that trash-mountain.

[edit on 27-11-2007 by Throbber]

I have heard it also. I know of no images that exist. I searched google, and one source said there were no images available. Without an image, I suspect the story is not entirely accurate. You would expect that something that large would show up on google earth.

Lets put all of the rapists there and turn it into a Running Man show.

reply to post by logicize


Well the thing is, that google earth and google maps are made entirely out of satellite imagery from third party corporations, and that only areas of real interest are ever photographed in much detail. This is fine for most of the 1st world, but there is a huge amount of the planet that isn't mapped in any kind of decent resolution, my home town being one. That's why you'll most likely not see anything out in the ocean where the trash is on either of these services - nobody has bothered to aim a decent camera at it.

I, too, have heard of this "landmass" before and would like to see pictures of it. Seems to me we (the planet) should do something about it soon. It may already be too big to deal with effectively.

There was a thread a while ago about how there were some flights going to an area between California and Hawaii, but staying there. It was strange.

I found the video on You Tube

Is this related in any way?

By the way, the new continent article made me nauseous.


Nyorai

Originally posted by Thousand
reply to post by logicize

 

Well the thing is, that google earth and google maps are made entirely out of satellite imagery from third party corporations, and that only areas of real interest are ever photographed in much detail. This is fine for most of the 1st world, but there is a huge amount of the planet that isn't mapped in any kind of decent resolution, my home town being one. That's why you'll most likely not see anything out in the ocean where the trash is on either of these services - nobody has bothered to aim a decent camera at it.

Sorry, but this doesn't fly for me. You're telling me that the reason we can't see a mass twice the size of Texas on google earth is because the detail isn't good enough? Seriously, if you don't have google earth, download it and look for yourself. Something that large would be impossible to miss.

I think the story is either a huge exageration or an outright lie.

This is a problem no doubt; and as someone who grew up on the water, certainly disgusting. But, false hype does the credibility of this very real problem no good.

Is it really twice the size of Texas? Wiki says no:

For several years ocean researcher Charles Moore has been investigating a concentration of floating plastic debris in the North Pacific Gyre. He has reported concentrations of plastics on the order of 3,340,000 pieces/km² with a mean mass of 5.1kg/km² collected using a manta trawl with a rectangular opening of 0.9x0.15m² at the surface. Trawls at depths of 10m found less than half, consisting primarily of monofilament line fouled with diatoms and other plankton.[1]

Some sources[2] have incorrectly reported that there is a "floating continent" of debris that is roughly twice the size of Texas, however no scientific investigation, including Moore's, has verified this.

I'm not exactly a Greenpeace fan because I despise some of their tactics; but occasionally you can find something good on their site. Interesting animation.

By the way, it's believed that this is not the only occurrence of this in our oceans.

reply to post by BlueTriangle


This was reported on quite a bit in the past. I've seen video a few times on various news programs. It is not a solid mass and that is misleading. It is mostly small items that float covering a huge area. The tonnage may sound large but spread over such a large area it is just small pieces of floating debris when viewed up close. From Google Earth you would have to be able to read a road sign clearly to see anything that looked different from the surrounding water. Float a little one inch by one inch piece of something on water and let it drift out a 4 or 5 thousand feet and take a picture. All you will see is water and that is as close a resolution as the best on GE.

There have been a couple of articles on this in our small paper in the last year.


[edit on 11/27/2007 by Blaine91555]

Good find there titan!
It does seem hard to find proper photos of this floating garbage.The original article talks about birds being attracted to the garbage "shining",so maybe we could find evidence of that on google earth,although they are not "real time" images.
Another thing-I would have thought that the MSM would be all over this story,as they love ramming any environmental scare tactics on the news these days.
Maybe the story is overhyped-but there is a real problem in our seas with masses of plastic getting into the food chain.
It will get worse until we find an alternative to plastic,and even then the plastic that is already in the sea will not go away.
Sad state of affairs.

Originally posted by Silcone Synapse
It will get worse until we find an alternative to plastic,and even then the plastic that is already in the sea will not go away.

Where others see thrash, doom and gloom, I see a goldmine.

Giant Microwave Turns Plastic Back To Oil

Black gold, that is.

I wonder which country will be the first to hoist a flag on it and claim it. A bit more rubbish and you have a nice large floating land mass.

Perhaps jails could be built upon it to hold the prison population of the planet.

reply to post by Beachcoma

Nice one BC,
I would still worry about the possibility of toxic byproducts,but that does look promising.
I think getting some newly qualified naval engineers to sweep up the trash would be the way to go-imagine the positive media coverage,and the troop moral boost.()
Everyones a winner..



Someone could do this,and get positive recognition from the world community.
We could do it here at ATS,if we got our act together.Hell I will be a participant if it will help getting the ball rolling.SOMEONE has gotta do this.
Anyone here wanna gang up and make it happen?
This is nothing political or anything,so it does not go against the T+C.Its just an idea,from the heart.
So heres the deal-the mods or 3 amigos buy us a boat (hehehe)which we use to sweep up the garbage-bit by bit.It would take years maybe-but the world would find out about our good deeds.WE could set an example to everyone.
OK,so what do you think of my plan?
Sorry,rant over-but its gotta be worth a try IMO.(Maybe the 3amigos won't buy the boat,but we could all chip in I think )

Here's a clip from THE TODAY SHOW on the Pacific Garbage Patch.

[edit on 30-11-2007 by me.b4ck]

[edit on 30-11-2007 by me.b4ck]

[edit on 30-11-2007 by me.b4ck]

reply to post by me.b4ck


Good Work me.b4ck !

That video shows us why we cannot see the mess on google earth-because it is not a giant floating land mass as we would normally consider a "continent" to be.
The footage of the Hawaiian beach made me wanna puke quite honestly.
Horrid.Someone get down there with a truck and clean it up-looks like theres enough plastic to make a ruck of money if you found somewhere to weigh it in.
We gotta stop making plastic.
We have enough already.
Lets re use what we have foolishly made.

i'm sure a few aliens have seen it and laugh at world governments that
want to rule yet allow their own planet to die. disgusting!

reply to post by Silcone Synapse


The garbage has to go somewere, we who wine and dine at fast food places, never think twice, unwrap eat in the bin it goes, do this for ninty odd years, co-op city in New York buildt on land fill. Like other places your never told about, like the Love canal in Upper NY. A real toxic Dump were Homes for familys were buildt. Many places like this in U.S.

reply to post by bone13


I hear you.This subject has been playing on my mind for a while now,and get this I live in OUTBACK Wales UK,in a tiny nowhere town where today I had to trample through many plastic bags on the street,not to mention the bags flying about in the wind.
It made me feel ill,and I told my Bro "these plastic bags will be a curse on humanity for generations to come."
ANd thats just one stupid item...without considering everything else we "get rid of."
Some great custodians of the planet we turned out to be don't you think?
Maybe God would have been better to go with the dolphins as the dominant species...