I usually like to keep it light and airy on this blog, but I just had to mention this particularly scary topic concerning the North Pacific (Subtropical) Gyre. Gyres can be thought of as "ocean deserts", giant areas of the ocean surrounded by swirling ocean currents and dominated by high pressure systems. They take up about 40% of the world's oceans, are low in biomass, and largely avoided by sailors. This particular gyre, however, is also known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch", as by all accounts it includes an area that is a huge vortex filled with collected garbage. In past years this flotsam would biodegrade, but now its filled with photo-degrading plastic, which cannot be naturally recycled and contains toxins like PCPs. One study in the gyre determined that the plastic bits outnumber zooplankton (the ocean's most prevalent animal organism) by a ratio of 6:1. Over the past few decades, Nike shoes, hockey equipment, and bathtub toys have been spilled into the Gyre by passing cargo ships, and washed up onshore years later. Numerous sea birds around the world have been found dead with plastic filling their stomachs and intestines as the plastic has entered the oceanic food chain. This phenomenon is only going to get worse, as plastic usage is increasing and billions of tons of plastic pellets are created every year. Now that's scary.
[Don't worry, I'll have some dick jokes for you later.]
North Pacific Gyre [Wikipedia]
Trashed - Across the Pacific Ocean, plastics, plastics, everywhere, by Charles Moore [Natural History Magazine]
Beachcombing Science from Bath Toys [Beachcombers.org]
The Problem with Plastic: Waves of Junk Are Flowing Into Food Chain [The Seattle Times]
Plastic in the Plankton [ACF]
Plastic Pellets in the Aquatic Environment [EPA]