The Great Pacific garbage patch, also described as the Pacific trash vortex, is a gyre of marine debris particles in the north central Pacific Ocean.
Can you imagine that this giant garbage vortex in the Pacific Ocean is over twice the size of Texas? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a massive area measuring more than 1.6 million square kilometers, but it's just part of the North Pacific Gyre, an ocean region where currents collect plastic. It is big enough that a petition is launched to recognise Great Pacific Patch as a country!
“Would you like to visit if Great Pacific Garbage Patch is declared as a new country?
A garbage patch is usually made up of tiny plastic pieces called “microplastics” that are less than 5 millimeters long. There might be some other larger items, like plastic bottles, but it’s still possible to sail through a garbage patch and not see anything. However, it is not that simple for us to clean up this mess.
First of all, these garbage patches are huge! Then they move with the ocean currents constantly, which make it harder to be controlled because they occupy not only on the ocean surface, but all the way down to the sea floor.
A New Island or A Nightmare?
At the time of sampling, there were more than 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch that weigh an estimated 80,000 tonnes. Thanks to all human beings, our ocean now will have more trash and plastics compared to the fish in 2050.
Beach clean up will not solve the problem at once. But we will be cleaning it up forever if we do not stop marine debris at source. So practice 3Rs to reduce, reuse and recycle before it is to late.
It is not only for us, but for all the poor marine lives, and our children in future.