The protracted and complicated search for Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 has exposed a worldwide problem that hadn’t previously gotten much attention: the oceans are full of garbage.
During the search along the Australian coast, there were numerous sightings of discarded fishing equipment, cargo container parts, and plastic shopping bags. The truth is that the oceans have become garbage dumps.
People who study the problem have found that objects in the oceans eventually migrate to regions known as garbage patches. The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans have two patches each, north and south. The Indian Ocean’s garbage patch is centered roughly halfway between Africa and Australia. These patches are huge zones where debris accumulates but floats free, circulating continuously.
Participants in last summer’s Transpacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Honolulu encountered logs, telephone poles, and other wood debris from the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami, which had drifted into the Texas-sized Great Pacific Garbage Patch, joining vast amounts of other junk.
About 90 percent of the debris in the ocean garbage patches is plastic, which means that nearly all of the mess dates from the past 50 years. Among the greatest environmental hazards associated with this trash is that animals frequently consume it. Sea turtles and California gray whales are unintentional consumers of plastic. Fish nibble away at the trash until it is broken into small pieces and then is ingested by birds and other creatures.
Sometimes it takes a human disaster to expose problems we have created and have managed to ignore for a long time.
**********
.
Web Links
Plane Search Shows World’s Oceans Are Full of Trash
Photo, taken February 14, 2011, courtesy of epSos.de via Flickr.
.
Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Support for Earth Wise comes from the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, NY.