The Trash Vortex

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean (the one to the left) there is a man made island twice the size of Texas and growing by the minute.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is in a part of the Pacific Ocean “that no one ever visits and only a few ever pass through. Sailors avoid it like the plague for it lacks the wind they need to sail Fishermen leave it alone because its lack of nutrients makes it an oceanic desert.” Capt. Charles Moore.

Cptn. Moore, director of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation explains the phenomenon like this;

“A huge mountain of air, which has been heated at the equator, and then begins descending in a gentle clockwise rotation as it approaches the North Pole, creates this ocean realm.

The circular winds produce circular ocean currents that spiral into a center where there is a slight down-welling Scientists know this atmospheric phenomenon as the subtropical high, and the ocean current it creates as the north Pacific central or sub-tropical gyre.

Because of the stability of this gentle maelstrom, the largest uniform climatic feature on Earth is also an accumulator of the debris of civilization. Anything that floats, no matter where it comes from on the north Pacific Rim or ocean, ends up here, sometimes after drifting around the periphery for 12 years or more.”

Basically, in a nutshell every piece of waste that isn’t bio-degradable and ends up in the pacific ocean gathers with other waste here the ever growing massive and disqusting man made plastic island. A place where garbage gets trapped and can never leave.

Cptn. Moores full paper can be read here.