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World’s oceans face problem of plastic pollution; Some researchers believe that more than 5 million square miles of the Pacific Ocean has become a soup of plastic confetti

Posted by: Maven on November 14, 2008 at 1:48 pm

From PBS’s Online News Hour:

JIM LEHRER: And finally tonight, the problems created by trash floating in the Pacific Ocean. Spencer Michels has our Science Unit report.

SPENCER MICHELS, NewsHour correspondent: Sixty-one-year-old Charles Moore, former owner of a furniture repair business in Long Beach, California, and an amateur scientist, surprised the scientific world with a discovery he made in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

While sailing his research vessel back from Hawaii in 1997, he ran into what he calls a vast “garbage patch” in a calm part of the sea.

CHARLES MOORE, Ocean Researcher: Every single day for that week that we crossed these doldrums, we saw trash every time we came on deck. I think it’s fair to say that the phenomena exists from just off the coast of China all the way to a few hundred miles from the coast of California. It’s at least one-and-a-half times the size of the United States, approximately 5 million square miles.

SPENCER MICHELS: Using what’s called a manta trawl to skim the water, Moore and his crew found tons of trash in an area called the North Pacific Gyre, that is largely off the main shipping and sailing routes. Among the junk: umbrella handles, cigarette lighters, ropes, thousands of toothbrushes.

These are from Hawaii, huh?

CHARLES MOORE: Yes, they’re from Asia, probably. Like here’s a brand I don’t recognize.

Read more, or watch the video of the broadcast from the Online News Hour by clicking here.

November 14, 2008 · Filed Under Oceans & Beaches

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