Wednesday, July 23, 2014

'Fun Facts' About The Great Pacific Garbage Patch & Co.

Continuing from the previous post, a few interesting items from the Wikipedia page on the "Great Pacific garbage patch" and its four fellow mid-ocean dumps around the globe:

  • The Great Pacific garbage patch was predicted in a 1988 paper published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States. 
  • Charles J. Moore, returning home through the North Pacific Gyre after competing in the Transpac sailing race in 1997, came upon an enormous stretch of floating debris.
  • It consists primarily of submerged, suspended concentrations of often-microscopic particles in the upper water column, which, in one of many effects, fish consume as they feed on their normal menu… and those plastic micro-bits migrate all the way up the food chain.

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