This is just one post in the Pacific Ocean Garbage Dump Category

Earthrace reports on Pacific Ocean garbage dump

Posted by: Aqua Blog Maven on May 21, 2008 at 6:05 pm

From Powerboat.com, an interesting, first-person look at the trash swirling around in the Pacific. A group is traveling across the ocean in a biofuel-powered trimaran and they are just coming into the area becoming known as the Pacific Ocean garbage dump. From the post:

‘There’s a lot of crap in the water here’, Adam says, as we dodge around another plastic bottle in the water. Our course is more like a drunken student weaving his way home after a bender, rather than a race boat in a straight line. It seems every hundred metres or so there’s another bit of crap in the water, and anything resembling a buoy (like a plastic bottle), we need to skirt around.

Prof Sharma in Scotland had warned us about this area. Actually so had Bob McDavitt, our forecaster back in New Zealand. It is a giant rubbish dump of plastic and polystyrene, that unbelievably, is the size of Texas, and we’re currently on the southern tip of it.

What actually happens is the current that passes down the West Coast of America picks up rubbish and debris along the Californian coast, and then drags them all the way out here, some thousand odd nautical miles away. The current here then drops under the surface, leaving behind all the rubbish. It joins the giant Californian rubbish dump that remains here year after year, and gradually increases in density as more crap drifts in.

According to the map included with the post, there is an eastern patch closer to Japan as well as the western patch, which is between Hawaii and the west coast. Read more from this Earthrace post from Powerboats.com by clicking here.

May 21, 2008 · Filed Under Pacific Ocean Garbage Dump