The Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Synthetic Sea are areas of the Pacific Ocean where trash is carried and concentrated by ocean currents into a soup. Since this human waste is having adverse impacts on marine ecosystems and on marine life, the area has become a concern for conservationists and environmentalists.
To keep oceans clean and to keep wildlife from ingesting our trash, it is important that we either recycle unwanted materials or place them into a trash receptacle. Albatrosses will feed plastic — mistaken for marine food— to their chicks, and the chicks die slowly from a diet of indigestible trash.
Other marine life suffers from anthropogenic waste too. Sea turtles can die from ingesting plastic, because the plastic impacts within their gut. Marine debris also impacts other marine life such as fish.
Do you need proof that trash such as plastic adversely impacts marine wildlife? The images below show decomposed albatross chicks that have died from consuming marine debris. Obviously, the indigestible trash must result in a painful and slow death. More information can be found here and here.
On the Net:
- Marine Debris: Cigarette Lighters and the Plastic Problem on Midway Atoll
- Remote Waters Offer No Refuge from Plastic Trash
- Oprah Shines Light On Great Pacific Garbage Patch (VIDEO)
UPDATE 1 (24 April 09):
Video: Small fish living within the synthetic sea are consuming plastic:
Synthetic sea images were found here. Albatross images were found here, here, here, and here.
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That is the most disgusting thing I’ve seen/ heard in a long time. How come this isn’t something I’ve heard of before…? Do people just not care? Can’t we just go clean it up? How difficult would that really be????
Hi Brooke. I believe it would be very difficult to clean up the mess. There is just too much of it. Furthermore, I doubt there is the international political will to spend the $$$, but I could be wrong.
I’m here in Michigan, and now that the snow has melted, it is easy to see all the trash thrown out of car windows in the past 4 or 5 months. It’s disgusting. We need to establish a citizen volunteer corps in local communities to clean up this mess and to educate people. I believe that some people just don’t get it and need to be told–others just don’t care. Anyhow, if people would just put their trash in bags and send it off to landfills (and/or recycle what they can)–it would make a huge difference, since a lot of this trash is just washed out to sea.
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This is totally unacceptable. People can be such pigs. Actually that’s not true I think Pigs are cleaner. We need to clean this up. Stop spending taxpayer money on stupid worthless things and let’s use the money to clean this up! It will help us all in the long run!!