Plastic Soup and the Trash Vortex
Posted by Meggs | Environmental Posts | Posted on February 9th, 2008
Years ago I was lucky enough to pay a visit to the largest sand island in the world – Fraser Island. Like most tourists at the time we took a bus trip along the beach front and through the heart of the island stopping off at the lakes and the rainforest areas.
There was no doubt that the island itself was picturesque and I was blown away by the rainforest and freshwater stream that spun its way through the middle of it.
But there was one thing that didn’t impress me and that was the amount of plastic that was washed up on the beach front.
Alas it is the same along the Australian coastline particularly in remote beach locations that don’t have the luxury of council sponsored grooming.
In one sentence: plastic is the scourge of the earth.
This was brought home to me yet again this week with the news of a rubbish vortex twice the size of Texas floating somewhere between Hawaii and Japan.
It’s estimated that there is 100 million tonnes of plastic produced each year and over 10% of that ends up in our oceans if not directly by careless fisherman, oil pltforms, cruise ships and beach goers but indirectly through stormwater fallout.
With slight winds, calm waters and clockwise currents discarded rubbish gets caught in the “Trash Vortex”, “Great Eastern Garbage Patch” or the “Asian Trash Trail” and stays there collecting more. Reports of up to 6kg of plastic for every kilogram of naturally occurring plankton are common within the area.
Not quite our ideal flotsam and plastic is said to make up 90% of the world’s floating rubbish.
Sadly not all plastic floats. In fact 70% of plastic sinks to the bottom of the ocean floor.
Tests in the North Sea have found that there 110 pieces of plastic garbage for every square kilometre of sea bed.
Clean up operations for the plastic soup could be put in place tomorrow – if only there was a government or people movement somewhere in the world that would take responsibility for it.
The impact on fish populations is still inconclusive but one thing is for sure the breakdown of plastic in the water into tiny pellets that have the ability to attract man made chemicals which enter the food chain through the fish we eat is obviously not a positive phenomena.
Needless to say, next time you’re on the water make sure you keep your rubbish on board and where possible keep your plastic usage to a bare minimum.
Sea you later,
Skipper Meggs