The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Definition and Background

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area in the Pacific ocean where plastic waste tends to accumulate due to the interactions of ocean currents.  Four ocean currents combine to form a gyre, which is a vortex created by ocean currents, where trash and debris are pulled into and eventually trapped: the California, the North Pacific, the Kuroshio, and the North Equatorial.

Figure 1: The gyre in which causes the formation of the garbage patches visualized (U.S. Dept. of Commerce and NOAA 2010).

According to the National Geographic Society, “About 80% of the debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch comes from land-based activities in North America and Asia. Trash from the coast of North America takes about six years to reach the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, while trash from Japan and other Asian countries takes about a year.” The other 20% of trash comes from offshore activities where debris is either accidentally or deliberately dumped into the sea (National Geographic Society 2012).  This accumulation of plastic is problematic as these plastics break down into smaller and smaller pieces known as microplastics, which are then consumed by ocean life.  This is enough of a problem on its own, however, when it is considered that 3 billion people around the world depend on seafood for their main source of protein, another problem is easily seen (Sustainable Seafood).  This problem does not only occur in the Pacific, as scientists have identified numerous garbage patches world wide as detailed by the diagram below.

Figure 2: Garbage patches around the world (National Geographic Society 2012).

History of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

The garbage patch was first discovered in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore while he was sailing home across the Pacific to California (Bauer 2018).  He decided to sail through the Pacific gyre despite it usually being avoided by sailors because of the light winds present there.  He is quoted as saying: “It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments. Months later, after I discussed what I had seen with the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, perhaps the world’s leading expert on flotsam, he began referring to the area as the ‘eastern garbage patch'” (National Geographic Society 2012).  As Moore began to increase awareness about the issue, more organizations began to make it their mission to aide in the cleanup of the patch.  Over time as plastic production has increased and therefore more plastic is thrown out, the patch has grown.  At the present time, the patch covers an area of approximately 1.6 billion square kilometers, or about twice the size of Texas (Lebreton 2018).

The Problem with the Plastic

As one could imagine, that much plastic floating around in the ocean is quite problematic.

Figure 3: Plastic floating on the surface of the Pacific (National Geographic Society 2012).

Many marine organisms mistake the small pieces of plastic for food and ingest them.  This unfortunate albatross consumed large amounts of plastic and died both because it lacked nutrients from actual food and because the plastic remained inside it and caused health problems.  There are many instances of whales, dolphins, seals, and other marine mammals getting tangled in discarded fishing nets and other debris in the patches and being killed or severely deformed as a result.  As bad as these alone seem, there is yet another, larger problem as a result of the pollution.  When the plastic breaks down, it never truly “goes away,” but rather decomposes into smaller and smaller pieces known as microplastics, which can be seen to an extent in the foreground of figure 3 as small specks beneath the masses of plastic on the surface.  In the garbage patch plastic pieces outweigh surface zooplankton six times over (Kostigen 2008).  This is troubling not only because this statistic is ten years old, but also because zooplankton is a key part of the ocean’s food chain.  Plankton is the foundation on which the rest of the food chain rests.  If there is six times more plastic than plankton, one might suspect that a massive amount of fish and animals are ingesting plastic.  That assumption would be correct.  According to a recent study, one quarter of the fish at Indonesian and Californian fish markets contained plastic particles (Forster 2016).  When it is considered how much of the world’s population relies on fish to eat, it is alarming to think how much plastic many people are ingesting themselves as a result of our own pollution.  If simply eating plastic was not bad enough, when plastic is immersed in ocean water, it absorbs other pollutants in it “like a sponge.”  When an experiment was carried out comparing pollutant levels in fish that were fed regular food, food containing ten percent plastic, and food containing ten percent plastic that had been soaked in San Diego Bay, the fish that ate the bay soaked plastic had elevated levels of pollutants in them when compared even to fish that had eaten plastics that had not been soaked (Barclay 2013).  These outside pollutants can include harmful chemicals such as fertilizers, industrial runoff, and Bisphenol-A, or BPA.  This video visualizes the ways by which all of these forces come together to put plastics into our seafood and onto our plates.

Politics of Health and the Pacific Garbage Patch

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch has a huge impact on the marine ecosystem which much of the world’s population relies on for sustenance.  While the patch in the Pacific is the largest, as seen in figure one, the problem spans the globe.  Legislation encouraging the reuse and recycling of plastic products in states like California work to alleviate the problem.  The United States passed legislation in 2015 to ban microbeads of plastic in rinse off cosmetics, displaying acknowledgement that microplastics in the water is an issue that should be dealt with (Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition 2017).  One issue that comes to mind is that of scientific knowledge production and what will happen as this becomes an even larger and more pressing issue.  How plastics companies react and what evidence they produce to legitimize their products will be scrutinized.  A continuation of this pollution could lead to the fish and other seafood we eat to become inedible due to high amounts of plastics and the pollutants it absorbs contaminating it, creating food deserts in areas that rely on fishing for sustenance.  These plastics also bring into question citizenship, both for the plastic and the people affected by it.  When it comes to the “citizenship” of the plastic, one might wonder where the plastic came from and who is responsible for cleaning it up.  If people begin experiencing health effects as a result of plastics contaminating their food supply, to what state do they claim biological citizenship? Since it is impossible to trace where the debris came from and most every nation is in some way responsible for dumping plastics into the sea, this question is likely unanswerable.  If humans destroy fisheries with plastic pollution and seafood is no longer a viable option for those who rely on it, a question of relief efforts and a sort of “nutritional triage” come into question.  If people around the world cannot feed themselves and there is only so much food, how do we decide who gets food and how much?  Are only those who are wealthy enough to afford more expensive foods as the demand for food that does not come from the ocean able to eat while the rest of the population starves?  It is not yet known exactly what could become of this issue, however, it is know that the potential environmental, social, and health impacts could be catastrophic.  The solution to the cleaning up of the Pacific Garbage Patch lies in the political realm and only through cooperation around the globe will we as a species and a society save ourselves and our planet from our own actions.

Works Cited

Barclay, Eliza. “How Plastic In The Ocean Is Contaminating Your Seafood.” NPR, NPR, 13 Dec. 2013, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/12/12/250438904/how-plastic-in-the-ocean-is-contaminating-your-seafood.

Bauer, Patricia. “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 7 Feb. 2018, www.britannica.com/topic/Great-Pacific-Garbage-Patch.

Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. “Laws & Regulations – The Microbead-Free Waters Act: FAQs.” U S Food and Drug Administration Home Page, Center for

Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, 3 Nov. 2017,www.fda.gov/Cosmetics/GuidanceRegulation/LawsRegulations/ucm531849.htm.

Forster, Katie. “Microplastics in the Sea a Growing Threat to Human Health, United Nations Warns.” The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media, 21 May 2016, www.independent.co.uk/environment/microplastics-microbeads-ocean-sea-serious-health-risks-united-nations-warns-a7041036.html.

Kostigen, Thomas M. “The World’s Largest Dump: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Discover Magazine, 10 July 2008, discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/10-the-worlds-largest-dump.

Lebreton, L., et al. “Evidence That the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Rapidly Accumulating Plastic.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 22 Mar. 2018, www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22939-w.

National Geographic Society. “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” National Geographic Society, 9 Oct. 2012, www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/.

“Sustainable Seafood.” WWF, World Wildlife Fund, www.worldwildlife.org/industries/sustainable-seafood.

US Department of Commerce, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “What Is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?” NOAA’s National Ocean Service, 22 Apr. 2010, oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html.