![]() While microplastics made up 94 percent of the total number of pieces of plastic in the patch, they only accounted for 8 percent of the mass. What they found: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches across 617,000 square miles of the northern Pacific Ocean, based on their survey, and plastics make up 99.9 percent of the trash in the patch.Īnd while 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic might seem extraordinary, oceanographer Laurent Lebreton of The Ocean Cleanup foundation said the composition of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the noteworthy takeaway. Then, like prior studies, the team used math models and ocean current projections to estimate the scale of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The international team took the extra step of conducting aircraft surveys - covering 120 square miles and snapping 7,300 photographs - so they could better calculate the amount of large pieces of plastic. But they used 652 nets capable of catching microplastics or larger trash.Ī multilevel trawl, photographed from below, sample the surface waters of the ocean. The Netherlands-based organization hired 18 ships to trawl at different spots across the whole patch. But the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is in a league of its own not only as the world’s largest body of water, but in regards to the amount of garbage floating on it as well, and as Slat estimates, it might take ten vessels dragging Jennys behind it to rid it of its unsightly burden. The Arctic Sunrise ship will travel through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to capture and document the plastic pollution found in the Pacific. ![]() Three year ago, The Ocean Cleanup foundation opted for a more direct approach. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch a massive accumulation of ocean plastic located halfway between California and Hawaii is a monument to corporate greed and the throwaway culture it has created. By extrapolating, they could develop a sense of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch size, but their final estimates - especially for large pieces of trash - varied dramatically. Scientists tried counting these larger items by eye, but they could only do so for small sections of the patch. Running these nets through the patch, which extends from California to Hawaii, was not only laborious, it failed to catch big things like bottles and buoys. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a soupy mix of plastics and microplastics in the middle of the Pacific, now twice the size of Texas. ![]() In the past, scientists estimated the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by hopping on a boat and trawling the trash with fine nets - nets originally designed for catching plankton. What the scientists did: Plastics tend to break down, due to heat and sunlight exposure, into small particles known as microplastics. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers 1.6 million square kilometers - 617,000 square miles - according to a new report from The Ocean Cleanup foundation. ![]()
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