The world's rubbish dump: a tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan. A . Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US- based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Mr Moore founded, said yesterday: . It is not quite like that. Many people seem to believe there is a huge pile of plastic trash floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and. A 'plastic soup' of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said. 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. Twice the size of Texas, the remote Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch is home to much of the world's plastic trash, and now a scientific expedition has documented the vast ''dump'' for the first time. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch may be developing permanent features, such as trash islands. After hearing about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” earlier this year — an area the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean filled with trash — I went looking for it on Google Earth. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size as continental United States. About one- fifth of the junk – which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and carrier bags – is thrown off ships or oil platforms. The rest comes from land. Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1. Discover Great Pacific Garbage Patch in Pacific Ocean, United States: Island of trash twice the size of Texas floats in the Pacific. WFLX Fox 29-TV: News & Weather for Palm Beaches & Treasure Coast - Fox29 WFLX TV, West Palm Beach, FL-news & weather. Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the . Usually sailors avoid it. He was astonished to find himself surrounded by rubbish, day after day, thousands of miles from land. How could this go on for a week? He warned yesterday that unless consumers cut back on their use of disposable plastics, the plastic stew would double in size over the next decade. Professor David Karl, an oceanographer at the University of Hawaii, said more research was needed to establish the size and nature of the plastic soup but that there was . Historically, rubbish that ends up in oceanic gyres has biodegraded. But modern plastics are so durable that objects half- a- century old have been found in the north Pacific dump. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food. Plastic is believed to constitute 9. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2. Dr Eriksen said the slowly rotating mass of rubbish- laden water poses a risk to human health, too. Hundreds of millions of tiny plastic pellets, or nurdles – the raw materials for the plastic industry – are lost or spilled every year, working their way into the sea. These pollutants act as chemical sponges attracting man- made chemicals such as hydrocarbons and the pesticide DDT. They then enter the food chain.
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