The Gyres Part 4: The Atlantic Ocean Garbage Dump


A plastic-littered shore
(Photo from BilalmiRza on Flickr through Creative Commons)

The “great Pacific garbage patch” is notorious for the volume of trash floating in its currents (about 3 million metric tons—mostly plastics.) Sadly, the gruesome truth is this region of the Pacific Ocean isn’t the only monster collection of human litter.  Recently, scientists from the Sea Education Association (SEA) have confirmed a similar area exists in the North Atlantic Ocean.

The findings of the two-decade-long study were announced at the Ocean Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon.

“We found a region fairly far north in the Atlantic Ocean where this debris appears to be concentrated and remains over long periods of time,” Dr. Kara Law of the SEA said at the meeting.

Also, in an interview with BBC, Dr. Law said the issue of plastics in the Atlantic Ocean had been ‘largely ignored.’ One of the most troubling things about plastic in the oceans is it’s consumed by marine creatures, which mistake the degraded particles for food. She noted:

The work is the conclusion of the longest and most extensive record of plastic marine debris in any ocean basin… We know that many marine organisms are consuming these plastics and we know this has a bad effect on seabirds in particular.


(Photo from goa-entranced on Flickr through Creative Commons)

Some members of the marine science community are now afraid that plastic toxins are affecting humans who consume contaminated seafood.

Students and researchers from the SEA used fine nets towed behind a research vessel to collect plastic trash and marine litter.

The researchers carried out 6,100 tows in areas of the Caribbean and the North Atlantic off the coast of the US.

Researchers counted more than 64,000 pieces of plastic from the tows, which took place between 1986 and 2008. (Source: US News and World Report)

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The garbage patches in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans are two of five suspected areas around the globe. Captain Charles Moore, founder of California-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, is credited with discovering and publicizing the Texas-sized garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. “25 percent of our planet is a toilet that never flushes,” says Moore.

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