{"id":25,"date":"2023-07-23T22:56:17","date_gmt":"2023-07-23T22:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/?p=25"},"modified":"2023-07-24T02:54:30","modified_gmt":"2023-07-24T02:54:30","slug":"the-great-pacific-garbage-patch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/environment\/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Pacific Garbage Patch"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Is there anyway to save our oceans?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up in oceans, seas, and other large bodies of water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawai’i and California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawai’i. This convergence zone is where warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The amount of debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates because much of it is not biodegradable. Many plastics, for instance, do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many people, the idea of a \u201cgarbage patch\u201d conjures up images of an island of trash floating on the ocean. In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics can\u2019t always be seen by the naked eye. Even satellite imagery doesn\u2019t show a giant patch of garbage. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patchcan simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. This soup is intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers and ecologistsrecently discovered that about 70 percent of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is too large for scientists to trawl. In addition, not all of the trash floats on the surface. Denser debris can sink centimeters or even several meters beneath the surface, making the vortex\u2019s area nearly impossible to measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

80 percent of plastic in the ocean is estimated to come from land-based sources, with the remaining 20 percent coming from boats and other marine sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article was written by Jeannie Evers at nationalgeorgraphic.org. The original article is here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is there anyway to save our oceans? The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Marine debris is litter that ends up<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/novella-6780.com\/webdev\/project-three\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}