It’s large, but you can’t see it from space. He hopes that by revealing what’s going on “below the surface” he can “inspire people to stop using single-use plastic and to rethink the way we live. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a large collection of marine debris that can be seen floating on the ocean surface. Ben Lecomte says his face-to-face experience with the Pacific’s garbage has prompted him to reduce his consumption of plastic. She points to companies such as Filtrol that are developing filters that remove microfibers from washing machine outflows.Īwareness-raising is another priority. It is hard to conceive of a way to remove microfibers from the ocean on a grand scale, says Royer, but she hopes that scientific data will prompt policymakers to legislate for technical fixes to prevent the fibers entering the ocean in the first place. Research on the impact of microfibers is in its infancy and “we don’t know if that would have health consequences for people who eat the fish,” she says. “Finding microfibers would show that they are not always excreted by the fish but can pass through cell walls and get lodged in flesh,” she says. Thousands of people have stopped flying because of climate change Scattered into the air or flushed down water pipes, the fibers eventually reach the ocean via waterways. When laundered, a standard, six-kilogram load of synthetic fiber clothing releases “about 700,000 microfibers,” she says. “Most of our clothes nowadays are made out of different types of plastic including polyester, nylon, Lycra, polypropylene … and they shed microfibers at all times,” says Royer. Read: Bringing back bison to restore America’s lost prairie She is examining the samples for plastic microfibers – microscopically small plastic threads that are a mounting cause for concern. The crew sent samples of seawater and slices of fish flesh to Sarah-Jeanne Royer, a marine plastics expert at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the expedition’s lead scientist on dry land. “It was really disturbing,” says McWhirter, “but we still ate it.” Plastic fragments were not visible in most of the dissected fish, but one mahi mahi had a piece of plastic in its stomach that was macro – not micro – in size. According to a three-year study published in Scientific Reports Friday, the mass known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is about 1.6 million square kilometers in size - up to 16 times bigger. It is located roughly from 135W 155W 35N 42N 2 Spanning from the western coast of North America to Japan. The stomach of a mahi mahi fish, caught by the crew, contained two small fish, three squid beaks and a large piece of vexar - a plastic commonly used by the shellfish farming industry. Great Pacific Garbage Patch (also Pacific trash North Pacific Garbage Patch 1) is a garbage patch, a gyre marine debris particles, in the central North Pacific Ocean.
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