In the middle of the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between San Francisco and Hawaii, there is a floating heap of debris the size of a continent!
In reality, the rogue bag would float into a sewer, follow the storm drain to the ocean, then make its way to the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a heap of debris floating in the Pacific that's twice the size of Texas, according to marine biologists.
The enormous stew of trash - which consists of 80 percent plastics and weighs some 3.5 million tons, say oceanographers - floats where few people ever travel, in a no-man's land between San Francisco and Hawaii.
Marcus Eriksen, director of research and education at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, said his group has been monitoring the Garbage Patch for 10 years.
"With the winds blowing in and the currents in the gyre going circular, it's the perfect environment for trapping," Eriksen said. "There's nothing we can do about it now, except do no more harm."
The patch has been growing, along with ocean debris worldwide, tenfold every decade since the 1950s, said Chris Parry, public education program manager with the California Coastal Commission in San Francisco.
Link - Thanks Aar000n! (Photo: Kat Wade / Chronicle)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
Below is the first paragraph from that page.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also described as the Eastern Garbage Patch or the Pacific Trash Vortex, is a gyre of marine litter in the central North Pacific Ocean located roughly between 135° to 155°W and 35° to 42°N and estimated to be twice the size of Texas.[1] The patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of suspended plastic and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre. Despite its size and density, the patch is not visible from satellite photography because it consists of very small pieces, almost invisible to the naked eye [2] and most of its contents are suspended beneath the surface of the ocean. [3]
http://www.chrisjordan.com/current_set2.php
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=32055783
All you people are all so negitive, jesus christ you piss me off especially SoftwareSamurai
Krimmeny people, do some research before you make up your mind. The article gives you a great place to start, the Algalita Marine Research Foundation webpage perhaps?
http://www.algalita.org/
The plastic doesn't have to be surficial to be there.
http://www.algalita.org/pelagic_plastic_mov.html