Great Pacific Garbage Patch: Solving the Mystery The Great
Pacific Garbage Patch is finally getting some attention from the
scientific community. We talked about the island of trash in a
previous post, outlining its massive size (twice the size of
Texas by some estimates) and its unknown origins. Today,
researchers will embark on a mission to uncover the mystery
behind the giant convergence of plastic waste in the Pacific
Ocean. So far, scientists believe the mass is made up of
plastic, small and large pieces, coming from storm drains and
rivers from places like the San Francisco Bay Area and Japan,
which, eventually drifts into several large ocean currents that
cause the debris to swirl like water in a drain and collect,
strangely, in one area about 1000 miles west of California.
"This is a problem that is kind of out of sight, out of mind,
but it is having devastating impacts on the ocean. I felt we
needed to do something about it," said Mary Crowley, the founder
of Project Kaisei, a nonprofit expedition th