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The gyre contains approximately six pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton. [9] A similar patch of floating plastic debris is found in the Atlantic Ocean, called the North Atlantic garbage patch. [10] [11] This growing patch contributes to other environmental damage to marine ecosystems and species.
A garbage patch is a gyre of marine debris particles caused by the effects of ocean currents and increasing plastic pollution by human populations. These human-caused collections of plastic and other debris are responsible for ecosystem and environmental problems that affect marine life, contaminate oceans with toxic chemicals, and contribute ...
At the ocean surface, plastic debris is concentrated within circular structures of large areal extent, called ocean gyres. Ocean gyres form within all oceans, due to alternating patterns of zonal winds that drive equatorward interior transport in the subtropics, and poleward interior transport in subpolar oceans.
Over 700 marine species, including half of the world’s cetaceans (such as whales and dolphins), all of its sea turtles, and a third of its seabirds, are known to ingest plastic.
The plastic data collected by the students at SEA validated Maximenko's model, and researchers were able to successfully predict plastic accumulation in the North Atlantic Ocean. [ 14 ] A recent study published in December 2022 investigated the microbial communities found in the North Atlantic Garbage Patch and compared the data to the Great ...
An estimated 171 trillion plastic particles were afloat in the oceans by 2019, according to peer-reviewed research led by the 5 Gyres Institute, a U.S. organisation that campaigns to reduce ...
The Indian Ocean Garbage Patch on a continuous ocean map centered near the south pole. The Indian Ocean garbage patch, discovered in 2010, is a marine garbage patch, a gyre of marine litter, suspended in the upper water column of the central Indian Ocean, specifically the Indian Ocean Gyre, one of the five major oceanic gyres.
During the 5 Gyres expedition, 48 samples were taken from a 2,424 nautical sweep. The researchers found an increase in plastic pollution density, averaging 26,898 particles per square kilometer, but spiking at up to 396,342 particles per square kilometer, peaking near the center of the predicted accumulation zone, [4] with some estimates as high as one million particles per square kilometer.