Pacific Garbage Patch

Splash! Another piece of trash hits the ocean. Did you know that the Pacific Garbage Patch is 617,763.4537 miles long! That’s horrendous. Despite the common public perception of the patch existing as giant islands of floating garbage, its low density  prevents detection by satellite imagery, or even by casual boaters or divers in the area. People think it’s an island, but it’s really tiny pieces of trash dispersed all over the ocean. 92% of the mass in the patch comes from plastic lighters, toothbrushes, water bottles, pens, baby bottles, cell phones, and plastic bags. Some of the trash in our ocean is over 50 years old, 80,000 metric tons of plastic inhabit the patch, totaling 1.8 trillion pieces. 

“Some beaches are buried under five to 10 feet of trash, while other beaches are riddled with “plastic sand,” millions of grain-like pieces of plastic that are practically impossible to clean up.” said Jacob Silverman from the website How Stuff Works. A similar patch of floating plastic debris is found in the Atlantic Ocean, called the North Atlantic Garbage Patch. It is 124,274.238 miles long. 

As a fifth grader, it is important for us to protect our ocean. If we don’t we will soon have no fish or sea life. We have to stop this really soon. It should be important to us because we can get sick from the trash. I am confident that we can do this.