Seventy-nine thousand tons of plastic debris, in the form of 1.8 trillion pieces, now occupy an area three times the size of France in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, a scientific team reported on Thursday. The amount of plastic found in this area, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is “increasing exponentially,” according to the surveyors, who used two planes and 18 boats to assess the ocean pollution. The “patch” is not an island or a single mass, leading some scientists to object to the name (which the current study uses). There’s a key distinction between the mass of plastic within the patch increasing – which it is – and the overall size of the patch, which does not seem to be changing. Clearly, much plastic is sinking and doing its damage at the seafloor, or in lower depths of the ocean.

Source: National Post March 22, 2018 18:10 UTC