Why there are no pictures of the North Pacific Trash Gyre
A lot of folks over on Digg were very skeptical of the existence of the North Pacific Trash Gyre. They want to know: why are there no photos of floating heaps of trash? Why can’t you see the giant trash island the size of Texas on Google Earth?
When I learned of the trash gyre, I was equally skeptical, due to common misconceptions that get perpetuated in mainstream media articles. The most common misconception is that the trash pile is like an island, or a dense pile like this one in San Diego Harbor. It’s not packed in as tight as that – it’s more like a dense collection of tiny floating pieces of plastic, most of which are not on the surface. A big container ship or naval vessel going through there would probably not notice much out of the ordinary – after all, there is some degree of plastic trash floating on the surface all over the world.
To really get a sense of how much plastic is in there, you have to do a trawl, which entails dragging a net with a bucket on the end behind your boat. Here’s a photo of a bongo trawl taken off of southern California. (Credit: Barbeau Lab, SIO) And here’s a photo of what a normal bongo trawl should produce – lots of zooplankton, a few invertebrates, and the occasional small fish.
Now, contrast this with the results of a trawl from the North Pacific Gyre. Here’s the bongo net being hauled up – see how the ocean looks normal? But the contents – plastic, plastic, and more plastic.* (Credit: Algalita Marine Research Foundation). When all that plastic collects somewhere, you get beaches like this one in the NW Hawaiian Islands.
For this reason, the trash gyre would be very, very hard to clean up. The plastic is so small, and so scattered, that it would take high-intensity trawling similar to that for shrimp. And shrimp trawling kills 10 pounds of non-targeted life (sharks, turtles, fish, you name it) for every pound of shrimp gathered. (Yes, Forrest Gump lied to you – for some reason they didn’t want drowned turtles next to Tom Hank’s angelic self.) The mortality caused by trying to remove all the trash in the gyre would probably be similar. We’re just going to have to live with it and try to prevent it from getting any bigger.
*Note: some of these results are from manta trawls intead of bongos – it’s just a differently shaped net.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 8:26 pm and is filed under Environment, North Pacific Trash Gyre, Ocean, Pollution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
206 Responses to Why there are no pictures of the North Pacific Trash Gyre
indigosociety.com/9829-dream-share-9829-indigo-island-9829-t2869.html
I just noticed this Indigo Society proposal to weld the trash into a floating utopia. I’m not going to comment on either Indigo Societies or the fate of utopias, but please do refer to the 5th paragraph above where I explain why it would be difficult and environmentally damaging to try to remove small pieces of trash from the ocean. Unless you want to kill 10 lbs of sea life for every pound of plastic, you’ll have to build your brave new island out of something else.
I am sorry, but after reading several articles that state there is very little marine life nor nutrition in the gyre, due to its nature, i am confused about your figures, Miriam. There is no dispute that the north pacific gre is created by the Pacific’s currents. Also, there is research that has revealed that marine life avoid the gyre due to it’s lack of nutrients, which is a byproduct of the ocean current. As a result there is very little in the way of the food chain inhabiting the gyre area. The ratio you use of 10lbs of marine life to 1 lb of plastic surely would not apply to the gyre area if there is little sea life there in the first place. I do agree that the pollutants would be hard for the indigo society, or anybody for that matter, to remove. But i do believe that mother nature will need a hand in this and more marine life ,in the long run, would be saved if the trash was removed verses how many pounds would be sacrificed by trawling.
[...] The Oyster’s Garter…re:satellite images of the Gyre and more [...]
Luckyreow – You are right that the gyres are a marine desert with relatively little life. However, like a terrestrial desert, the life that is there is specially adapted to living in a harsh environment and is often really cool. For example, the ocean sunfish, which eats jellyfish, can be found there. You are incorrect that there is little food chain. Due to the lack of nutrients, the food chain is actually very long because it is based on the tiniest of plankton.
Regarding trawling the gyre, I do not quite understand your argument – if there is little marine life in the gyre, why not leave the plastic where it is? It is true that the 10:1 ratio from shrimp fisheries may not apply in the gyre – it would be interesting to do an experimental trawl and see. However, remember that turtles and albatrosses, which have been the plastic-eating poster children, are also hit hardest by high-intensity trawling since they get caught in the net and drown.
Ok, so there is some stuff floating on the ocean. If you told me that there was a big sandy spot in the mid-latitudes of Africa with little life and some plastic, I wouldn’t care. Now we find that there is some desert in the Pacific with little life and some plastic. Whoopdy do.
Well, I suppose apathy is your prerogative. Here’s why I care about the huge amount of trash in the gyre:
1) Direct killing of sealife. Though the gyre is not productive, there is still lots of special critters that live there. Albatrosses has been hit hardest since it can’t distinguish between trash and fish.
2) Transportation of toxins and invasive species to one of the last true wildernesses. Plastic soaks up PCBs like a sponge, and invasive invertebrates cling to debris. Debris also aggregates fish, which like to swim in shadows, which increases the chance of toxins accumulating up the food chain. That is bad for people.
3) Morality. Letting tons and tons of plastic float about in the Pacific is bad, tacky, and the equivalent of people who smear their feces on bathroom walls. I don’t think we can clean it up, but at least we stop putting more in.
I agree with Miriam as to some of the major concerns regarding the gyre and it’s pollutants. However, I am having a hard time accepting that nothing can be done about it, except not to make the situation worse. Unfortunately, when cleaning up an environmental disaster, such the plastic in this gyre, there will be a negative effect on another aspect of the environment or wildlife. I probably don’t fully understand what the barriers are to such a task, but if some marine life is lost in the process it may be for the greater good.
Best compilation of general info I’ve seen on this yet … thanks.
Strange that some wouldn’t care — where do they think their seafood comes from?
and maybe people need to be reminded that this mess, which could survive for (hundreds of?) thousands of years, was all created in the past 50 or so!
are we prepared to live with this trashpile becoming 2, 3, … times as large in coming decades?
i hope not
ESJ, to be painfully accurate, your seafood probably does not come from the North Pacific Gyre. There are relatively few big fish out there because it’s not very fertile. But personally, I rather like having albatrosses and turtles in the world, and I bet a lot of people agree.
John, I agree. One easy way to stop the gyre from growing is to stop using plastic shopping bags yourself and to support banning them altogether. Thanks for stopping by!
I have three words that will help this go further: Education, Education, Education! So many people do not know what a problem plastics are – both in the developed and developing nations (I noticed that in parts of Mexico its almost rude to deny a plastic bag when offered – very strange). Distrubuting leaflets to school children with good, clear pictures and descriptions of the plastic problem is going to be my new years resolution. Also, where is the media on this one? Whatever happened to the FCCs promise that a portion of television will be for the public good – yeah right! Ok – save fighting the FCC for 2009…Thanks for the great website!
First off, thank you for a great explanation of this problem. Before I found this article, I did alot of searching for more about this, including pictures, but only could find the map with drawing of the approx size of this thing. I was starting to think this thing was a hoax or at best not much of a problem. I think the media is doing great harm to this cause, as they do with most things.
As to the idea of getting people to reduce thier plastic consumption, it would be a bit impractical to completely stop using plastics. I’d say, instead of scaring kids with more sensationalized facts (see the media) we might be better served to teach recycling. The plastic bag issue is a favorite scare thing, although alot of poeple don’t realize that they can be recycled with your other plastics. I use plastic bags from my grocery store all the time. Then they go right into the recycle bin for round 2.
Have a nice day, yall
Jeff – I’m glad you enjoyed the post. In most states, plastic bags cannot be placed in the curbside recycling bins. Here in CA, they must be returned to grocery stores. This makes rates of recycling extremely low (only 1-3% according to this site). I don’t think that people need to stop using plastics altogether – I like my mixing bowls & contact lenses! – but if you’ve got to lug your plastic bags back to the store to be recycled anyway, why not just use a reusable bag? That way your groceries are easier to carry & you’re reducing your carbon footprint (since making & recycling plastic bags takes energy).
Excellent post on this major issue Mriam.
You readers maybe interested in the following as well;
1. Expeditions into the gyre and in the Atlantic; environmentdebate.wordpress.com/2007/05/17/the-dead-zone-plastic-fcuktastic/
2. Visuals; environmentdebate.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/images-video-from-the-north-pacific-gyre/
:)
Good discussion. I’m putting a foldable little shopping bag in my coat pocket right now so that I can avoid using plastic bags and paper bags as much as possible. I also carry them in my car for shopping, but I’m going to be more diligent about using them.
I think there must be a way we can clean up some of the gyre. Nothing is truly impossible. I am concerned about the “developing” world. We in the US have the riches and “luxury” to be thinking about these issues, as daily survival is not such a big deal for most of us. But China, India, etc….. as they become more and more “like us” they will be polluting like us, too. We MUST lead the way in changing our ways!
I think that plastic is a problem even in the ocean. My thoughts after researching about the ocean are that we should deff/ clean the plastic up and perhaps recycle some of it. I don’t think the U.S.A. is resp. for all of the plastic I think we should deff/ get other countries involved in the clean up process.It might damage some ocean life now, but the over all results should be rewarding both for human beings and marine life for years to come. We can open plastic recycling centers in California and in other areas, and countrie to help open jobs and contribute to helping the earth. These special recycling centers will only deal with plastic from the ocean not regular products from a weekly pick up. (Not until the project is complete)
Thank you for bringing this information together for reader! One thing that I thought of while reading the comments is that I do not think that people really get how the food chain in the ocean actually works. Plastic photodegrades (it will never, ever biodegrade — it simply breaks down until it is finally molecule-size, but it is still a polymer) until it basically mimics zooplankton. Currently, in the gyre, the mass of plastic bits is 6 times the mass of zooplankton. Zooplankton are the basis of the entire food chain. Filter feeders, like jellyfish, consume huge amounts of zooplankton. Then other creatures eat the filter feeders. They are in turn consumed by other predators. And the process continues. Many of the fish that we target for commercial fisheries are relatively high on that food chain, and it does not matter that they are not caught in the gyre. The food chain starts in places like the gyre — the same vortex of currents that concentrate flotsam (floating trash) also concentrate zooplankton. That makes it a good place for the predators of zooplankton to congregate. The problem is that non-organic substances — like polymers, heavy metals, etc. — cannot be digested and accumulate in the organisms that eat them until they are, in turn, consumed. They are then stored in that animal’s body for the rest of its life … and so on. This is why extremely high levels of mercury were recently recorded in bluefin tuna in New York City — bluefin tuna are long-lived and peak predators, so they end up concentrating large amounts. And guess who eats the ocean’s peak predators? That’s right: you and me. As far as I have been able to find, no one is doing any big studies about polymers in peak predators, but it should be a concern. Worse yet, as has been mentioned here already, plastic absorbs toxins (like PCBs), which are also passed through the food chain.
Because of the future threat that even the current plastic concentration in the gyre poses, and because of the cumulative effect of the toxicity, I am in favor of the international community studying clean-up options. (I do think that some bio-mass loss is acceptable in the process, but just how much is where the studies need to come in to the equation.) In the meantime, I think stopping plastic pollution is imperative. So, yes, reduce the demand for plastic (avoid it or reuse it), commit to plastic recycling (keep it out of the landfills, and reduce the amount of virgin plastic being produced from petroleum), and encourage the transition to bio-based plastics (buy it, support it).
Thanks again for bringing this topic to light!
Good comment Donita. Yes, less packaging and if packaging is necessary, biodegradable packaging is the way to go. For example; blog.environmentsolutions.co.uk/?p=86
But there are many companies out there doing this and they must be supported. Using corn for corn starch in biodegradable packaging is far better than using it for ethanol! Still better of course that corn is used for food products.
[...] more about the Gyre here, here, here and [...]
this is well funny i throw loads of used tyres in the sea all the time lol
this is a great site to find out about the sea if you want to keep in touch email me at annatillman_91@yahoo.com
this is just fucked up do something someone