Imagine an island of trash nearly the size of 8,500 Bellinghams floating in the middle of the ocean.
The water’s awash with toothbrushes, laundry baskets, trawling nets, plastic bags and miles of plastic cord mixed with plastic bottles, rubber ducks, gym shoes and cigarette lighters.
Welcome to the edge of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the world’s largest floating trash heap, 1000 miles west of the continental U.S. and 1,200 miles north of Hawaii.
Coined ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’ by flotsam expert Curtis Ebbesmeyer, it collects trash brought by the swirling currents of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.
Between 70 and 80 percent of the trash in the Garbage Patch comes from a multitude of shorelines, the rest from neighboring waters and ocean vessels, swept into the ocean by storms and wind, according to Charles Moore of Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, Calif.
Propelled by slow, clockwise-swirling ocean currents, the Garbage Patch engulfs random objects like an immense, nebulous amoeba. It can also split and ‘reproduce’ much like an amoeba, its plastic spawn washing ashore on beaches of Hawaii, Washington and Japan, according to Ebbesmeyer.
The Central Pacific may seem a million miles away, but the trash horizon is moving closer. The Garbage Patch likely exemplifies the future of many marine areas: subtropical gyres, potential swirling trash purgatories, cover 40 percent of the world’s oceans, according to the book "Geosystems," by Robert Christopherson.
The Northwestern Hawaiian Island Archipelago is home to 7,000 species. A quarter of them live nowhere else: corals teeming with fish, invertebrates, and threatened green sea turtles. A pod of nearly 300 spinner dolphins reside in the Midway Atoll’s protected lagoon waters. Seventy percent of the Laysan albatross population nests here, said Barry Christenson, Wildlife Refuge manager of Midway Atoll.
This is the refuge of the last 1,100 Hawaiian monk seals on earth.
Greenpeace estimates that 1 million birds and 100,000 marine mammals die in the Garbage Patch each year.
Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge staff pulled up 27,200 pounds of ocean trash in 2000, according to the refuges’ Web site. Since 1996, nearly 500 tons of line, net and rope have been removed from the waters surrounding the Northern Hawaiian Islands.
"The hope was that we could find out where the nets are coming from, where they’re concentrated at specific times of the year and remove them at sea," said Kris McElwee, Pacific Islands coordinator for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Debris Program.
McElwee recently returned from a research cruise to detect and remove derelict fishing gear in the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, which encompasses a section of the marine reserve. McElwee’s project grew out of the High Seas Ghostnet Project, which began in 2001. Researchers developed satellite maps to locate ocean conditions that favored debris accumulation. Once these areas were established, the project team flew over them to record information that would pinpoint debris.
Researchers attached solar-powered tracking buoys to some nets adrift in the sea, called ‘ghostnets.’ Tracking the nets while still allowing them to float freely in the open ocean helps verify how accurately mapping and remote sensing data predict debris migration.
In the Pacific Northwest, smaller boats are taking on derelict fishing gear removal, mostly nets and crab pots. The Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary (NMS) has run its survey and removal work for three years with a grant from the NOAA Marine Debris Program, said Nir Barnea, Marine Debris coordinator for the West Coast.
Plastic entanglement is not as pervasive a problem in the Pacific Northwest. Nets and crab pots are larger offenders, said Liam Antrim, resource protection specialist for the Olympic Coast NMS.
"The amount of resources removed by derelict gear is frighteningly high," Antrim said.
Removing nets which contain entangled animals is a testimony to the firsthand effects of seaborne trash. One particular net in Neah Bay snared multiple harbor porpoises, a seal and a sea lion, in addition to birds and fish, Antrim said.
In some areas animal bones lie below on the sea floor, scoured by nets, said Ginny Broadhurst, director of the Northwest Straits Commission.
"This is my favorite program to work on because the solutions are so evident. For every piece of gear we remove it’s a success story. We find the gear and remove the gear and Puget Sound is healthier," Broadhurst said. "We set a goal of removing 90 percent of derelict gear by 2012, which will cost $5 million."
The San Juan Islands are the epicenter of Northwest Straits Commission’s removal work. A historic fishing site, its rocky underwater terrain has acted as a trap for nets.
"In all our work we’ve pulled more than 700 nets," Broadhurst said.
Not only can plastic entrap, entangle or entwine animals, but it also acts as a floating habitat for toxic substances. Plastics are porous, like ultrafine sponges for toxicants. Small plastic particles with high surface-to-volume ratios can absorb and transport a million times the concentration of toxic substances, such as DDT and PCBs, as surrounding water, according to Moore’s reasearch.
Common chemicals in this group are proven endocrine disrupters, or ‘gender benders,’ which interfere with the function of natural hormones. In the most dangerous cases, they manifest as reproductive disorders and cancer, according to Moore.
In 2003, the United States generated 26,650 tons of plastic waste, according to a report by Franklin Associates for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Pop bottles, containers and packaging accounted for nearly half of the total. That totals the weight of 59 Boeing 747s, fuel included, and just over two 747s in discarded pop bottles. The last half-century’s gross production of plastic easily surpasses 1 billion tons, according to "The World Without us," by Alan Weisman.
Moore, the scientist who has seen the most of the Garbage Patch, predicts two trends. First, smaller plastic particles will proliferate through photodegradation. Second, larger plastic parts will accumulate on the seafloor as they wear and sink.
Although the potential environmental impact of smaller debris and ‘plastic plankton’ is relatively unknown, Moore’s Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, Calif., recently won a research grant which will allow the team to begin researching effects of plastic particles on zooplankton.
Marine debris, particularly plastics and derelict fishing gear, is a global problem. Reliance on manufactured items like plastics have lead to their prolific ocean presence because qualities, like durability, enable them to persist in the marine environment.
"Marine debris is everyone’s problem. It has an impact that is significant," Barnea said. "We all exert some control over marine debris either by what we do, or don’t do."
Sido De Cassis is studying human relationships with the physical environment. This is her first published piece.