Hawaii’s offshore goldmine? Pacific trash vortex
The Greenpeace ship Esperanza recently cruised into one of world’s largest trash vortexes, centered 600 miles northeast of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
Sometimes referred to as the “garbage patch”, this North Pacific sub-tropical gyre is the epicenter of a system of currents and winds covering most of the North Pacific.
The currents tend to force any floating material into the low energy central area of the gyre, which is the equivalent of an area the size of Texas swirling slowly around like a clock.
There are few islands on which the floating material can beach. So it stays there in the gyre, in astounding quantities estimated at six kilos of plastic for every kilo of naturally occurring plankton.
Around 100 million tonnes of plastic are produced each year of which about 10 percent ends up in the sea. About 20 percent of this is from ships and platforms, the rest from land.
As trash swirls through the world’s oceans to a handful of vortexes like this, it leaves a trail of death and destruction along its path.
Plastic is often mistaken for food and has been found inside marine life of all sizes, from whales to zooplankton. It has been directly blamed for the death of a wide range of animals including albatrosses and sea turtles.
While massive trash like ghost nets can ensnare and trap thousands of creatures, there are concerns that even the smallest pieces of plastic may pose a problem, as plastic often accumulates in the digestive tract, and many animals essentially choke on plastic intake. Others starve to death from a lack of nutrition despite a full stomach (such as Laysen Albatross chicks).
Now, if Hawaii could only figure out how to harvest and reuse all that trash…
Published by Ken on January 29th, 2007 tagged Community Initiatives, HI-specific
3 Responses to “Hawaii’s offshore goldmine? Pacific trash vortex”
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January 31st, 2007 at 6:47 pm
I had this exact same thought the other day.
Plastic is oil, isn’t it? Sorry bad thinking.
We shouldn’t burn it, we should turn it into plastic lumber and replace miles of board-feet of forests decimated.
April 10th, 2007 at 3:34 pm
I just read an article about this in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and looked it up further and found this post. Man, this is a trashy world we live in, isn’t it? I’m getting tired of hearing how much humans have ruined it. But I like your idea, Andy… seems like there’s something “productive” that we could do with all this garbage. Maybe some day we intelligent humans will figure it all out. Hopefully it’s not too late…
April 12th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
I printed this essy out and gave it to my teacher and got 25 bouns points so thank you