When I first read about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch I thought it was the most disgusting human trash heap ever, not to mention a nasty symptom of global overpopulation. After all, the toxic soup of plastic debris sloshed together by major ocean currents is estimated to be the size of the continental United States, poisons marine life and isn’t going away (Ocean awash in toxic seas of plastic).
Now there is news of a similar stew in the Atlantic Ocean (a sample of which is shown in the photo). While the veracity of climate change remains iffy, there are environmental crises over which there is no argument. Yet the big environmental organizations appear unable to walk and chew gum at the same time, as many vital issues have fallen to the wayside with the hysteria about climate.
A 2nd garbage patch: Plastic soup seen in Atlantic, AP, April 15, 2010
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Researchers are warning of a new blight on the ocean: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over thousands of square miles (kilometers) in a remote expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
The floating garbage — hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents — was documented by two groups of scientists who trawled the sea between scenic Bermuda and Portugal’s mid-Atlantic Azores islands.
The studies describe a soup of micro-particles similar to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a phenomenon discovered a decade ago between Hawaii and California that researchers say is likely to exist in other places around the globe.
“We found the great Atlantic garbage patch,” said Anna Cummins, who collected plastic samples on a sailing voyage in February.
The debris is harmful for fish, sea mammals — and at the top of the food chain, potentially humans — even though much of the plastic has broken into such tiny pieces they are nearly invisible.
Since there is no realistic way of cleaning the oceans, advocates say the key is to keep more plastic out by raising awareness and, wherever possible, challenging a throwaway culture that uses non-biodegradable materials for disposable products.
“Our job now is to let people know that plastic ocean pollution is a global problem — it unfortunately is not confined to a single patch,” Cummins said. […]
Charles Moore, an ocean researcher credited with discovering the Pacific garbage patch in 1997, said the Atlantic undoubtedly has comparable amounts of plastic. The east coast of the United States has more people and more rivers to funnel garbage into the sea. But since the Atlantic is stormier, debris there likely is more diffuse, he said.
Whatever the difference between the two regions, plastics are devastating the environment across the world, said Moore, whose Algalita Marine Research Foundation based in Long Beach, California, was among the sponsors for Cummins and Eriksen.
“Humanity’s plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint,” he said.
Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish: A paper cited by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says as many as 100,000 marine mammals could die trash-related deaths each year.
The plastic bits, which can be impossible for fish to distinguish from plankton, are dangerous in part because they sponge up potentially harmful chemicals that are also circulating in the ocean, said Jacqueline Savitz, a marine scientist at Oceana, an ocean conservation group based in Washington.
As much as 80 percent of marine debris comes from land, according to the United Nations Environmental Program.
