There Is No Island of Trash in the Pacific
slate.com
slate.com
That's a google image search for "pacific garbage patch", and about half of the results are pure fiction. Photos of heavily polluted inhabited areas that are not actually part of the pacific gyre. Many articles reproduce these pictures from other sources and just assume they are photos of the garbage patch (a typical "citogenesis" problem: https://xkcd.com/978/).
This is very important because it bears directly on the credibility of scientists and of environmental activists. Once you lose credibility you rarely get it back. Many, many people (even some scientists, sadly) believe that action is more important than truth. That "doing the right thing" is paramount, even if you have to twist the facts a teensy bit to make them more palatable to the masses. But the masses are fickle, and they pick up on these things readily, with the result being a loss of credibility.
It's very difficult to always avoid the temptation of the easy, quick short-term gain, but the importance of maintaining scientific discipline should always override that impulse.
I haven't been following any stories about the Pacific Gyre in the mainstream media, but I've always understood it to be a region in the Pacific where garbage seems to concentrate because of ocean currents. Much of the garbage isn't visible as it floats just beneath the surface.
Because the Great Pacific Garbage Patch really exists.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
The patch is characterized by exceptionally high relative concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.[2] Because of its large area, it is of very low density (4 particles per cubic meter), and therefore not visible from satellite photography, nor even necessarily to casual boaters or divers in the area. It consists primarily of a small increase in suspended, often microscopic, particles in the upper water column.
Research has shown that this plastic marine debris affects at least 267 species worldwide
Also, overfishing is real. Colony collapse disorder is real and affects wild bees. Monarch butterflies and others are becoming extinct. So are tigers and many other species. (although the trend has been halted for tigers).
The human population explosion and energy use explosion that grew even faster are the problem. Regardless of how efficient we get, we can't sustain such population growth indefintely. And Capitalism is extremely efficient at exacerbating negative externalities - whether factory farms, private prisons, weapons manufacturers or manufacturers of anything (plastic etc.) the incentive is to exploit negative externalities as much as possible to have more customers pay more money faster. The collective effect is perpetually increasing money velocity and increased velocity of exploiting externalities.
From TFA, which pretty much says the same thing with different words:
>In fact, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was barely visible, since it comprised mostly micro-garbage. It can’t be scanned by satellites, or scoped out on Google Earth. You could be sailing right through the gyre, as many have observed, and never notice that you’re in the middle of a death-shaped noxious vortex. The patch is such a wishy-washy phenomenon, with wishy-washy impacts, that its extent can’t be described with any certainty. (“No scientifically sound estimates exist for the size or mass,” notes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)
What doesn't exist and is a myth is the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" as usually described in the media (the miles of visible floatsam, actual whole garbage thrown in, etc).
They don't say it doesn't exist, period.
They say it doesn't exist in the particular (mythical) form described.
If the Lock Bigfoot turned out to be a stray gorilla from some local zoo, he would exist, but the "Bigfoot" as described would still be a myth.
(Myth after all is commonly based on some historical basis).
What does surprise me is the various images we've seen of beaches, knee deep in often exported first world garbage, in the developing world. Surprise as they have never been the trigger for us to do something concrete to response.
gg in translation>
Oceans, plastic mystery
Of all the plastic waste dumped into the sea, scientists found that in 1%. Where did the remaining immensity? Survey become an invisible toxic pollution.
Would the plastic changing marine ecosystem without anyone able yet all the consequences? Now part of the oceans, as well as algae or plankton, waste plastics are everywhere, from the Arctic to Antarctica through the tropical seas. Several studies agree to say that nearly 50 billion pieces of plastic polluting the oceans. But here's the mystery: the vast majority (! 99%) of this waste has gone. Where did it go? Is ingested by marine organisms? Scientists around the world - oceanographers, environmentalists, microbiologists ... - now investigating this plastic became invisible.
A hunt
Until now, the scientific community knew that this waste fractionnaient in microplastic, particularly under the action of the waves and sun. It concluded that the plastic pieces remained mostly clustered on the surface. But recent studies have invalidated this hypothesis. Since these particles, which represent almost all plastic waste from the ocean, focus the attention of researchers: they are the heart of the problem because their ability to enter the environment seems endless. Seabed, ice, coast, wildlife ...: This documentary explores, in many scientific company, all tracks to understand where the plastic cover is, and wonders about the impact of this massive pollution.
== Lost at Sea: Where Is All the Plastic? http://science.sciencemag.org/content/304/5672/838
[1] http://www.naval-history.net/WW1LossesaContents.htm
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_sunk_by_submarin...