Many environmentalists have heard about the Great Pacific
Garbage Patch but not many have heard about the garbage patches in other
oceans. There are five other garbage patches including one that sits just
hundreds of miles off the coast on The United States; this is the Atlantic
Garbage Patch. The main part of the Atlantic garbage patch reaches from
22°N to 38°N. This is equivalent to the distance between Virginia and Cuba.
There is no knowledge of how tall the patch reaches because no one has yet to
venture the whole length.
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| The average plastic concentration in the North Atlantic Garbage Patch. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/atlantic-plastic/ |
The Atlantic Garbage Patch is invisible
from space and it can sometimes not been seen from the deck of a boat. Contrary
to popular belief, the patch is not a large floating island of plastic waste. The
plastic has been broken down by the sun drying it out. There are 520,000
fragments per square mile in the Atlantic patch. 90% of which are plastic. Eighty percent of
the garbage in the Atlantic had comes from land
sources. Either it has been dumped a lot the beach or has been blown from
open waste disposals. The ocean currents concentrate the garbage in a gyre. It
took 22 years to map out the concentrations of the garbage in the Atlantic. The
concentrations in the Atlantic have not increased by a notable amount compared
to the other garbage patches that on average have increased by 5x.
One of the major issues with the patch is
its impact on aquatic life. As many as 100,000 marine animal die from trash-related
deaths each year. Birds eat the plastic and cannot break it down and it causes
them to not receive nutrients that it needs to survive. Aquatic life can get
plastic rings stuck around their necks and choke because of it. Bottle caps,
balloons, and plastic wrap can be a choking hazard. Filter feeders can mistake
the fractions of the plastic for fish eggs. Barnacles can drift to non-native
areas by being stuck to the plastic. Also the plastic degrades in the water due
to the sunlight and it releases toxins into the water that can bioaccumulate.
Because
of the damage to marine life a clean-up strategy needs to come very soon. It is
said that this issue is caused by population growth and having more waste. The
other issue is that only 7% of plastic in the United States is recycled.
Clean-up would be difficult because the particles are small and hard to see
until you take a net and collect them. Some of the particles drift down to 300
ft. below the surface. One idea to make the plastic marketable
by turning it into fuel but the patch is too far away from the shore that it
would take too long to gather the resources. It would also take up massive
amounts of time. Taking nets to the water could endanger the marine life. The
most realistic option is to stop the spread on beaches and have better waste
disposal by the coasts.
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The sources of these plastic are not well understood, but we are more aware of how extensive they are in a qualitative sense. Inland cities are not "off the hook," as it is clear that at least some plastic pollution is transported by waterways to the coast. In the Great Lakes, the focus has been on micro-plastics generated by use of a variety of personal care products. http://wgntv.com/2014/04/16/lawmaker-moves-to-ban-microbeads-linked-to-lake-pollution/
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