Water Pollution Essay: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Water pollution has been a growing problem over the last couple of decades. The Pacific Ocean, covering about 46% of the Earth 's water surface, making it larger than all of the Earth 's land area combined, is vastly polluted. This issue is called The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, which is a gyre of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean discovered in 1997 by Capt. C. Moore.

The Great Pacific garbage patch formed slowly as a result of the ocean or marine pollution and gathered by oceanic currents. About 80% of the debris in the Pacific Garbage Patch comes from land activities in North America and Asia. Debris from the coast of North America takes approximately about 6 years to reach the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, while debris from Japan and other Asian nations take about 1 year. The remaining 20% of debris comes from boaters, offshore oil rigs, and huge cargo ships that dump or lose debris straight into the ocean. (Turgeon, 2014)

The size of the patch is unknown, most debris are small plastic pieces suspended at or just below the sea surface, making it impossible to spot by aircraft or satellite. (NOAA) The man, who discovered this patch and sailed through it for a week, Captain Charles Moore, was asked in an interview if the patch was removable, he says: “Well, if the entire continental United States had a million plastic particles per square mile, how would you propose to remove that from the entire surface area of the United