Scientists are setting sail for garbage island.
Like Columbus setting forth to discover a new world, and like Magellan and his crew seeking new lands in the Pacific, a team of researchers from across California will be setting sail from San Francisco Bay today to explore a new “continent,” the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The new landmass, invisible to satellite photography, consists of high concentrations of suspended plastic and other debris trapped by the North Pacific Gyre. It extends over an area twice the size of Texas, though no one knows its exact boundaries or when it began forming.
The two ships that will be sailing to the patch—the Kaisei (Japanese for “Ocean Planet”) and the New Horizon will study its size and the affect it is having on ocean life. It will also investigate whether it will be possible to clean up at least some of this soup of tiny plastic pieces. Plastic, which is six times as prevalent as plankton in the central Pacific, breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, but does not decompose.
The study is being funded in part by a $600,000 grant from the University of California. Read More at the Mercury News.
