An ocean full of floating garbage?

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But with satellites blocked by thick clouds and heavy rain reducing visibility in an ocean full of floating garbage, searchers have so far been unable to find any confirmed wreckage from the plane.

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I've never sailed across an ocean. I always assumed that they are pretty clean places....Kon Tiki, etc. Are they really "full of floating garbage"?
 
Blood pressure rising. This stuff does make me very cross.
Take bin liners.
Bring it back.
Chuck it in the proper bin.
So when you're six foot under, and your kids go ...
Its nice and clean.
There. feel much better.
 
Approaching the oil fields off the Brazilian coast, I came across a fridge, a double mattress and so much litter it is frightening. Amazing how much sea life gets attracted to the rubbish though.
 
Full of garbage which can "best " be seen in a flat calm.

Was down the East Mediterranean a few years ago near the Lebenon coast and I kid you not the plastic garbage bags were a disgusting continuous carpet.
 
Found a full size domestic fridge about 1000 miles from the azores. Flat calm, so went to have a look.

Could have filled the boat with all the bits of polystyrene foam we saw.
 
North Atlantic doesn't seem bad at the moment, Sailing Madeira - Canaries - Cape Verde - Azores we have only sighted the odd bottle or bit of plastic - maybe one every few days and plenty of marine life. The Mediteranean is a very different matter, though - filthy and nearly dead in some places though better in others.
 
Greylag, are you the author of Sailing my Dream - I'm sure the boat was called Greylag? A Maxi 33 I think - good book, excellent read!

Probably wrong but the name stuck out!

Cheers, Brian.
 
Try a google for "North Pacific Gyre Garbage"

The Doldrums are apparently also a collection point for all the plastic garbage in the seas.
 
Yup. There's over 3 million tons of garbage, mainly plastic, floating in the middle of the Atlantic. "The size of the Floating Plastic Garbage Dump was described on ABC Nightline video report tonight as the size of Africa." http://barrytyred2.blogspot.com/2007/10/floating-garbage-island-as-big-as-texas.html

You ever go diving? Ever see a plastic bag down there? Odds are it'll still be there in a year, ten years, a hundred...

Plastic is reckoned to stick around for 20,000 years. But I'm not sure what that figure means. Sunlight slowly breaks up what's floating into smaller pieces, all the while releasing various toxins. As the pieces get smaller over this very long period they are mistaken for food by smaller and smaller fish who cannot digest it and often die as a result. Every autopsied sea bird and turtle has been found to have plastic in its stomach.

The problem is growing. Simply cleaning up what is already there would be a monumental, if not an impossible, task. It's yet more doom n gloom.

It's a real hazard to shipping. I heard of someone who got stuck in the gyre for weeks. A positive step would be for Google to include it on their sattelite pics - even put it on the map as a continent! - so that people were more aware of the problem.

Apparently the most common litter numerically in the ocean is, wait for it, plastic cotton buds. They're made of stuff that won'y dissolve in your ear. In fact they may never dissolve. But how do they get there you might ask? Sailors obsessed with keeping their ears clean? Nope. Sewage. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/23/pollution.water?gusrc=rss&feed=environment "But there are also signs of progress. Environmental campaigners celebrated a small victory last week when Marks & Spencer, the Co-op and the Body Shop agreed to replace the plastic stems on cotton buds with cardboard."

Well, I guess that's a start... /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Thanks, folks, very informative and interesting. On the whole the Med isn't too bad though there are some bad spots and in some winds rubbish tends to get blown onto a certain shore.

I hadn't heard about the cotton bud problem.
 
Just back from Balearics - Gib - Madeira - Canaries - Cap Verde - Caribeans. I expected "a sea covered with garbage", I found a clean sea, with very few plastic floating, most of it obviously freshly thrown probably by some fo the many yachts crossing at the same time. I was surprised as well by the abundant sea life : every morning half a dozen flying fishes on deck, never waited more than two hours to catch the next two day's seafood.
We saw a lot of dolphins, some orcas, we lost a marlin when trying to get it on board, etc.
No, the situation I saw has no relation with the pessimistic propaganda we are flooded with.
 
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