Ocean clean up

The plastic will not go away by itself

A serious action has taken place in the Pacific to clean up the ocean. The Ocean Cleanup has dispatched a giant PacMan to remove plastic from the Pacific.

Over 5 trillion pieces of plastic are currently littered in the oceans, trash has accumulated in the ocean and if left to circulate, the plastics will impact our ecosystems, health and economies.

There are five major gyres, which are large system of circular ocean currents formed by global wind patterns and forces created by Earth's rotation. The movement of the world's major ocean gyres helps drive the “ocean conveyor belt.” The ocean conveyor belt circulates ocean water around the entire planet. Together, these larger and more permanent currents make up the systems of currents known as gyres.

The term “gyre” is used to refer to the collections of plastic waste and other debris found in higher concentrations in certain parts of the ocean. Solving it requires a combination of closing the source, and cleaning up what has already accumulated in the ocean.

Research shows the majority of plastic by mass is currently in the larger debris. By removing the plastic while most of it is still large, we prevent it from breaking down into dangerous microplastics. Combining the cleanup with source reduction on land paves the road towards a plastic free ocean by 2050.




Indian Ocean Subtropical Gyre.

The Indian Ocean’s garbage patch covers a massive area: at least five million square kilometers (two million square miles). As garbage patches such as these circulate for long periods of time, they cause inorganic toxins to enter the food chain due to solar breakdown of plastics in the water. In the Indian Ocean gyre, the garbage patch has been more of a mystery. Having just been discovered in 2010, it is still under research. It is known, however, that like most garbage patches, it is very fluid, and changes with the seasons, making its location difficult to pinpoint. It seems to circulate with the Indian Ocean gyre, from the Australian side to the African side, down the African coast, and then back to Australia. According to the team who discovered the garbage patch, the full rotation of the gyre’s garbage patch takes about six years, until it reaches the center of the gyre, where it may remain indefinitely.

The patch does not appear as a continuous debris field. As with other patches in each of the five oceanic gyres, the plastics in it break down to ever smaller particles, and to constituent polymers. As with the other patches, the field constitutes an elevated level of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge, and other debris; primarily particles that are invisible to the naked eye. The concentration of particle debris has been estimated to be approximately 10,000 particles per square kilometer.