There is quite a bit of press about a Pacific gyre that is many hundreds of miles in diameter swirling North of Hawaii that carries degrading plastic. It is not visible from satellites.
I have my doubts about two elements in this so-called scientific fact. The first is that I doubt that such a Pacific gyre is more than a periodic transitory event.
You can take a look at this article and see that oceanographers are projecting the movement of the Japanese tsunami debris to be crossing the Pacific right where the gyre is supposed to be. It goes right through the gyre.
I trust the accuracy of this material because there are oceanographic buoys that are floating in all of our oceans since the early 2000’s called the Argo project. There are 3000 buoys that are constantly tracked by satellites. Each one drops a kilometer or more into the ocean and measures a variety of data as they float around the world.
So how does this Japanese mountain of debris pass through the plastic filled gyre without cleaning it out? I doubt that it does.
I think the gyre is periodic.
The plastic in the Pacific gyre is supposed to be a problem because it is ingested by micro organisms that are eaten by sequentially larger ocean species. We finally eat the plastic micro bits.
This really rings a false note for me. I can eat plastic regardless of size and I know that none of it gets into my system and all of it comes out of my human exit portal. Its not food.
That is true for all biological species. The species either breaks down the plastic into digestible elements or the plastic passes through the digestive tract.
So where is the problem with this pressumed inedible temporary floating island of plastic trash?
