The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Zhi Juin CGC1D-02 The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Begin Research The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a slowly-moving, gyre of marine debris that was continuously mixed by a clockwise spiral of currents and was widely dispersed in the North Pacific Ocean. This mass of plastic has the twice the size of Texas and it was predicted by a Californian sailor, surfer, volunteer environmentalist, early-retired furniture restorer and scientist – Charles Moore – that it will most likely double in size in the next ten years. This gyre of marine debris was created by two major masses over ever-accumulating trash – the Western and the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch – and is now called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Obviously the development of producing plastic went to quick and people did not think of a unified and sustainable way of how to dispose the huge amount of plastic. Unfortunately many countries decided to dispose all the garbage into the ocean but also ship accidents are a reason why so much plastic accumulated in our ocean. Every year more than eight million tons of plastic waste leak into the ocean. A big issue nowadays is that most of the plastic which is produced in one year is used to make disposable items of packaging or other short lived products that are discarded within a year (Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society, 2009). That means that our use of plastic is not sustainable at all.

The amount of plastic products that ended up in the ocean as of 2015 are quite high. How high you may ask yourself? No not 1 million but 9 million tons of plastic waste laid in the ocean as of 2015. Who could be responsible for most of this plastic in the ocean? Surprisingly its china, they are responsible for 2.4 million tons per year. That 's 30 percent of the global total.

Plastics in our oceans is the most dangerous form of pollution in the 21st century In Los Angeles alone, 10 metric tons of plastic fragments—like shopping bags, straws and soda bottles—are carried into the Pacific Ocean every day. Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century. 50 percent of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away. Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce.The average American throws away approximately 185 pounds of plastic per year.Plastic accounts for around 10 percent of the total waste we generate.The production of plastic uses around eight percent of the world's oil

Unfortunately, plastic pollution in the ocean has not been recognized as an urgent problem. Since the ocean is treated as “the garbage dump” of the world for almost a century, there is a huge amount of plastic garbage. This essay will discuss the current situation, the effect on the marine environment and animals, plastic as chemical substance, and going to suggest the way to reduce the amount of plastic garbage in the ocean. Since the amount of the plastic production and consumption have constantly risen, a study estimated that the amount of plastic consumption will be 297.5 million tons by 2015. Eight million tons of plastic garbage have been thrown into the ocean every year.

Because they are unable to untangle themselves, they also die from starvation or from their inability to escape predators. On a report in 2006 called Plastic Debris in the World’s Oceans, It was estimated that at least 267 different animal species have suffered from entanglement and ingestion of plastic debris. Some species are consumers of jelly fish, but often mistake plastic bags for their natural prey, which obstructs the oesophagus of sea turtles therefor killing them. It has been estimated that about 400,000 marine mammals die annually due to plastic pollutions in the ocean. As said by Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra “One must be a sea, to receive a polluted stream without becoming impure”.

The main species being killed are the Bottlenose Dolphins, Spotted Dolphins, Risso’s Dolphins, False Killer Whales, and Short-Finned Pilot Whales. All of those species listed are considered threatened by IUCN-World Conservation Union. If these species were to become extinct or endangered there would be an overpopulation of fish in the oceans (Conservationists). In many ways, the Japanese businesses doing these drive hunts are causing many different problems the environment that will eventually come back to haunt the

As a result of sharks’ fins and teeth hunting, the number of these animals has significantly decreased. White sharks are often caught in large tuna nets, while hunting on them, or can also get trapped in special complex nettings that protect beaches. The English shark protection organization “Shark Trust” confirms that up to 73 million sharks are killed in targeted hunts for fins annually. Combining all the data worldwide- 200 million sharks are killed around the world each year. This is a great paradox because the number of humans killed by sharks compared to these numbers is insignificant.

This has caused the majority of sea turtles to be endangered. As you can clearly see, this has put a huge effect on sea turtle’s lives. Although many of them have been killed, they aren’t the only ones affected by this. Many other fish spices have been hit. Salmon sales have gone down because they’ve been dying.

However in the refugee camps there are no facilities or educators who are able or willing to provide them. It is also a basic human right to have access to running water which is not provided in these camps. In some camps, the closest water source is up to 5 km away, and there is no transport. Woman and children are forced to walk by themselves to collect water for their family, and often the water isn 't even clean. There is no sewage or waste removal system in place in these camps, which results in the refugees catching waterborne diseases.