![]() Laurent Lebreton, lead author of the study, explains: "Although it is not possible to draw any firm conclusions on the persistency of plastic pollution in the GPGP yet, this plastic accumulation rate inside the GPGP, which was greater than in the surrounding waters, indicates that the inflow of plastic into the patch continues to exceed the outflow. "We used to think most of the debris consists of small fragments, but this new analysis shines a new light on the scope of the debris."īy comparing the amount of microplastics with historical measurements of the GPGP, the team found that plastic pollution levels within the GPGP have been growing exponentially since measurements began in the 1970s. Julia Reisser, Chief Scientist of the expeditions. "We were surprised by the amount of large plastic objects we encountered," said Dr. 92% of the mass is represented by larger objects while only 8% of the mass is contained in microplastics, defined as pieces smaller than 5 mm in size. These figures are four to sixteen times higher than previous estimates. It lies between Hawaii and California and is often described as larger than Texas, even though it contains not a square foot of surface on which to stand. Accumulated in this area are 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, weighing 80,000 metric tons, the equivalent of 500 Jumbo Jets. Can you see the Great Pacific Garbage Patch from space The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the worlds largest collection of floating trashand the most famous. The results, published today in Scientific Reports, reveal that the GPGP, defined as the area with more than 10 kg of plastic per km 2, measures 1.6 million square kilometers, three times the size of continental France. The fleet collected a total of 1.2 million plastic samples, while the aerial sensors scanned more than 300 km 2 of ocean surface. ![]() ![]() To increase the surface area surveyed, and quantify the largest pieces of plastic - objects that include discarded fishing nets several meters in size - a C-130 Hercules aircraft was fitted with advanced sensors to collect multispectral imagery and 3D scans of the ocean garbage. Although most vessels were equipped with standard surface sampling nets, the fleet's mothership RV Ocean Starr also trawled two six-meter-wide devices, which allowed the team to sample medium to large-sized objects. In order to analyze the full extent of the GPGP, the team conducted the most comprehensive sampling effort of the GPGP to date by crossing the debris field with 30 vessels simultaneously, supplemented by two aircraft surveys. Additionally, these methods could not measure the magnitude of the problem to its fullest extent, because all sampling nets - small and large - were unable to capture objects greater than the size of the net. However, this method yields high uncertainty because of the small surface area that is covered. Conventionally, researchers have used single, fine-meshed nets, typically less than a meter in size, in an attempt to quantify the problem. They also found that plastic buoys and floats made up approximately 3% of the objects they found but took up a disproportionate amount of the mass in NPGP-21%.The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP), located halfway between Hawaii and California, is the largest accumulation zone for ocean plastics on Earth. But they did find that 26% of their haul was fishing-equipment based. The researchers found that approximately a third of their trash pieces were unidentifiable-they could not make out what sort of purposes they might have served or where they might have come from. To that end, they looked for words printed on debris as a means of identifying a language, or identifiable symbols, including logos. In this new effort, the researchers collected, sorted and studied 6,000 pieces of trash from the NPGP. The existence of the NPGP has garnered a lot of headlines in recent years, though the source of the trash has not been identified-until now. Scientists have estimated that there are tens of thousands of tons of the trash, most of it plastic, covering millions of square kilometers. In 2015, the Ocean Cleanup project crossed the patch with 30 boats and collected 1.2 million plastic samples 9. Prior research has shown that there is a giant island of trash floating atop the subtropical gyre in the North Pacific Ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is three times the size of France or two times the size of Texas 8.
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