Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch Worries Researchers

NeverVotedBush writes with an update to a story we discussed early this month about an enormous accumulation of garbage and plastic debris in the Pacific Ocean, a thousand miles off the coast of California. The team of scientists has now returned from their expedition to examine the area and say they "found much more debris than they expected." The team will start running tests on the samples they retrieved, and they are preparing to visit another section of ocean they suspect will be full of trash. "The Scripps team hopes the samples they gathered during the trip nail down answers to questions of the trash's environmental impact. Does eating plastic poison plankton? Is the ecosystem in trouble when new sea creatures hitchhike on the side of a water bottle? Plastics have entangled birds and turned up in the bellies of fish, and one paper cited by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates 100,000 marine mammals die trash-related deaths each year. The scientists hope their data gives clues as to the density and extent of marine debris, especially since the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may have company in the Southern Hemisphere, where scientists say the gyre is four times bigger. 'We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there,' said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution."

Comments

Is it full of

[Hognoxious]

Is it full of garbage patch dolls?

Re:Is it full of

[commodore64_love]

Some people probably don't realize but Garbage Pail Kids actually exist. It's an old 80s phenomenon that we used to trade:

LINK - http://www.lmgtfy.com/?q=Garbage+Pail+kids

Earth Plus Plastic.

[Vellmont]

This story remind me of the George Carlin bit on the environment:

The planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole.

So, the plastic is here, our job is done, we can be phased out now. And I think that's begun

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

[Dachannien]

We're afraid at what we're going to find in the South Gyre, but we've got to go there,' said Tony Haymet, director of the Scripps Institution.

Famous last words before being eaten by Cthulhu.

Re:Overreaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't mess with plastic Texas!

Do your part for the mother earth

[oldhack]

This is why I only buy family-size cheetos, unlike those selfish bastards that buy lunch-size packets.

Re:Do your part for the mother earth

[tecnico.hitos]

Yeah, by eating cheetos you help to reduce the styrofoam pollution

Re:Where do you put it?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Atlantic.

Re:Overreaction

[ben0207]

Yeah and they really stood the test of time.

Sponge Bob and Mr. Krab

[chefshoemaker]

"Does eating plastic poison plankton?" Of course it does. That is how Sponge Bob and Mr. Krab planned it. They released plasic waste into the oceans to eliminate their competition, Plankton, owner of the Chum Bucket.

Re:This is not complicated.

[commodoresloat]

I still don't see how we get to 6. Profit! from here

Re:This is not complicated.

[Eternauta3k]

What competes with the microbes for consuming plastic?

They're not consuming plastic anymore...

Plastic eating microbes find something else they like that taste's better

They're eating tasty fish/people

Re:Where do you put it?

[Suicide Drink]

>And where do you put it?

People keep bringing up Texas...