The Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean, which is twice the size of Texas, is a swath of plastic debris brought together by the ocean currents and kept in formation by a whirlpool of currents.
Sadly it’s not the only one, there are 5 gyres of trash. There is one even the Mediterranean Sea.
There are all kinds of plastic in the Patch, but the most dangerous for marine wildlife are the “ghost nets”.
World Animal Protection highlights that every year 640,000 metric tons of fishing nets are lost or discarded in our oceans each year, trapping and killing countless marine mammals, including endangered whales, seals and turtles. Shallow coral reef habitats also suffer further degradation from the gear, which can take up to 600 years to decompose.
Ghost Gear kills millions of animals a year and causes great suffering to many more. Heartbreakingly, many beautiful whales, turtles and dolphins are among their number.
Plastic breaks apart into smaller and smaller pieces, which become microplastics that become coated in algae that all fish eat, thus entering the food chain, which ends up in our plates!
Video Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio
Eco heroes are actively saving our oceans, such as Ocean Cleanup, that is successfully collecting garbage from the ocean and delivering it to landfill for recycling.
It’s crucial that each and everyone of us take the decision to stop using single use plastic: we have lived for millennia without plastic, we can live without it much better nowadays, we have plenty of raw natural materials to substitute plastic.
Say yes to Life, Earth thanks!
