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NEW!

Documenting the Great Pacific Garbage Patch a.k.a. 'Plastic Island'

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Amount of plastic in Texas-sized 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' has increased HUNDREDFOLD since the 1970s

By
Snejana Farberov
PUBLISHED: 17:32 GMT, 9 May 2012 |

UPDATED: 18:10 GMT, 9 May 2012
Scientists have found that the massive swirl of plastic waste known as the ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ has increased a hundredfold since the early 1970s, which could spell major changes for California and other coastal states.
During a 2009 expedition, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers took water samples 1,000 miles west of California, and then compared the amount of plastic they detected with samples dating back to 1972.

While many of the samples taken 40 years ago included little or no plastic, vast stretches of the North Pacific are now polluted with billions of tiny pieces of confetti-like trash that come from flotsam and jetsam that is swept into the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone by circulating ocean currents known as a gyre, and is then broken down by winds and waves.

The

particles of 'microplastic' - pieces of plastic smaller than 5 milometer in diameter

- sit on or near the surface, where they are consumed by fish, sea turtles and other marine animals.







The latest samples show that the garbage patch - which is about the size of Texas -  has become much denser: There are roughly 100 times more pieces of plastic per cubic meter of water than were in samples during the 1970s, according to the study cited by the

San Jose Mercury News.

‘We were really surprised. It is a very large increase,’ said Miriam Goldstein, a Ph.D. graduate student in biological oceanography and lead author of the study.



FULL STORY:

dailymail.co.uk