Can you tell me how to get ... how to get to Plastic Island?
A few years ago I searched on Google Maps for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (back then, people were just referring to it as "that big plastic island")... I couldn't find it. OK, so that didn't negate its existence; I hardly expected Google Maps to fly over the whole Pacific Ocean photographing it. But it was said it was as big as Texas, so why couldn't I see it?
I then did Google Image searches, and while there was any number of pictures of plastic-filled dumps in Third World countries, sometimes with tragic images of kids in there, there weren't any of the "island" per se. (A lot of these turned out to be Manila Bay)
I began to wonder if it might be a bit of a hoax.
But that was about three years ago. I've done a bit more research on it. Turns out you can't see it because the plastic's so small - microplastics, mostly. These are tiny fragments like sand grains, floating on or above the water. National Geographic confirms what the internet was(n't) telling me years ago - satellite imagery doesn't show a giant patch of garbage.
It also turns out there are five such patches, which are each getting caught in natural vortex systems in the oceans. These are called gyres (the root word for gyrate/gyration). There's one in the South Pacific as well, which is feeding plastic to our Lord Howe Island Flesh-footed Shearwaters.
Here is a TED talk from Captain Charles Moore, a sailor who first discovered the Pacific Island Garbage Patch.
His talk is disturbing... yet motivating.
And then there's some people making films about Midway, which is a small island off Hawaii which DOES get lots of the larger plastic. There's this guy.
There's also an independent filmmaker, Angela Sun, who made a film on this topic too, Plastic Paradise.
I then did Google Image searches, and while there was any number of pictures of plastic-filled dumps in Third World countries, sometimes with tragic images of kids in there, there weren't any of the "island" per se. (A lot of these turned out to be Manila Bay)
I began to wonder if it might be a bit of a hoax.
But that was about three years ago. I've done a bit more research on it. Turns out you can't see it because the plastic's so small - microplastics, mostly. These are tiny fragments like sand grains, floating on or above the water. National Geographic confirms what the internet was(n't) telling me years ago - satellite imagery doesn't show a giant patch of garbage.
It also turns out there are five such patches, which are each getting caught in natural vortex systems in the oceans. These are called gyres (the root word for gyrate/gyration). There's one in the South Pacific as well, which is feeding plastic to our Lord Howe Island Flesh-footed Shearwaters.
Here is a TED talk from Captain Charles Moore, a sailor who first discovered the Pacific Island Garbage Patch.
His talk is disturbing... yet motivating.
And then there's some people making films about Midway, which is a small island off Hawaii which DOES get lots of the larger plastic. There's this guy.
There's also an independent filmmaker, Angela Sun, who made a film on this topic too, Plastic Paradise.
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