We must stop the pollution of the world’s oceans!!!

Where does the garbage come from in the ocean?

Huge accumulations of garbage, resembling islands or even entire continents in size, are often found in the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic oceans. Researchers of this phenomenon compare it with "garbage soup": part of the waste does not sink, but floats on the surface or in the water column - and such "spots" of garbage stretch for many kilometers.

Our organization is involved in ocean collection and recycling.

Where does such a large amount of human waste come from in the ocean?

First of all, this is what is thrown into the water by residents and guests of cities located in close proximity to the seas.

For example, environmentalists call India, Thailand and China the leaders in water pollutants with garbage, where the discharge of everything unnecessary into rivers and seas is considered practically the norm.

Especially actively and thoughtlessly, tourists usually litter, vacationing on the warm sea coasts of the whole world. From them, cigarette butts, plastic bottles and cans from various drinks, glasses, corks, plastic bags, disposable tableware, cocktail tubes and other household waste fall into the water.

But that's not all. Let's remember school lessons. Rivers flow into the seas, the seas are part of the ocean waters, which make up more than 95% of the entire water shell of the Earth - the hydrosphere. Thus, most of the garbage thrown into the rivers, carried by the current, will also end up in the ocean.

According to scientists, about 80% of the volume of this giant water dump comes from the "land". And only the remaining 20% are the waste of "marine" human activities:

broken fishing nets;

waste from floating oil drilling rigs;

garbage thrown from ships, etc.

All this rubbish that enters the ocean goes with the flow and, finally, accumulates in certain places of "calm", where it forms whole "floating dumps" on the waves.

Pacific Garbage

The world's largest water dump is located in the North Pacific Ocean. It is there that ocean currents form a kind of funnel where garbage is pulled together.

The result is a real "dead sea" of rotting waste, marine flora, corpses of aquatic life, shipwrecks. And since the middle of the twentieth century, the floating remains of plastic, which naturally decomposes over several hundred years, began to accumulate here rapidly.

The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", "Pacific Garbage Island", "Garbage Iceberg" - as soon as they do not call in the media this huge accumulation of floating waste and garbage, located between Hawaii and California.

The exact dimensions are still unknown. According to rough estimates, its weight can be more than 3.5 million tons, with an area occupied by 10 or more million square kilometers.

According to the structure, the "garbage iceberg" is divided into two large parts - Western (closer to the shores of Japan and China) and Eastern (not far from California and Hawaii).

Pacific Garbage Island Facts:

Even before the actual discovery, its existence was announced in 1988 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. Such conclusions were made by scientists based on observations of the oceans, the movement of accumulations of waste in them, as well as the nature of the currents.

Officially, the “garbage bin” was opened in 1997 by Captain Charles Moore: traveling on a yacht, he found himself in a part of the body of water covered for many miles with debris floating on the surface. The discovery impressed Moore so much that he wrote several articles about it, which attracted the attention of the whole world to the problem. Subsequently, he became the founder of an environmental organization for the study of the oceans.

About 70% of waste sinks, so the so-called "garbage soup", which occupies a huge area on the surface of the water, is only one third of the total volume of the "world's water dump".

More than a million seabirds and aquatic mammals die each year from plastic pollution in the Pacific Ocean.

There are forecasts that promise a doubling of the scale of the "continent of waste" in just a decade, if humanity does not reduce the volume of consumed (and discarded) plastic products.

The production of plastic products in the world is still growing steadily every year. Accordingly, an increasing amount of it ends up in natural reservoirs.

For details on the Pacific Garbage Gate, see the videos: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtLcp5TL-NP0Mqp-2...

Danger and consequences of pollution of ocean waters

The damage that garbage islands cause to the environment, and ultimately to the life and health of the people themselves, is simply enormous.