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Aw heck. Soon the Earth will suffocate because our vicious species keeps shoving waste down its throat. Here’s the story, please read it. The Independent is reporting that an oceanographer Charles Moore ‘discovered’ a – to say the least – really dirty patch floating on the surface of the ocean between Japan and Hawaii. What he was looking at was the largest rubbish dump in the world held in place by the ocean currents. Up until today people thought that the patch was an island swamped by plastic that you could walk on. The huge thing, however, is no island; it is nearly twice the size as continental United States. The rubbish is basically debris that drifted from the mainland and shipborne garbage. The most worrying thing isn’t the garbage itself, although that alone is a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions; what will effect the marine ecosystem the most is the toxins that are produced by the decomposing plastic. You can’t detect the thing from the sky because of its translucency but it can be spotted from the ships.
/read more after the jump if you have a heart (haha, now you must)
”Mr Moore, a former sailor, came across the sea of waste by chance in 1997, while taking a short cut home from a Los Angeles to Hawaii yacht race. He had steered his craft into the “North Pacific gyre” – a vortex where the ocean circulates slowly because of little wind and extreme high pressure systems. Usually sailors avoid it.”
The side effects of this are horrifying. Not all plastic is biodegradable so the products are durable enough that they will last for decades if not centuries. This causes deaths of millions of animals such as seabirds and marine mammals per year. The animals mistake the plastic parts for food which results in death. Many objects were found in the stomachs of seabirds. The problem, that is far from innocent, effects our health as well. The particles in the water attract man-made chemicals like DDT.
“What goes into the ocean goes into these animals and onto your dinner plate. It’s that simple,” said Dr Eriksen.
Holy f*. F*. It’s time everybody stops just talking the talk and starts walking the walk as well.
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(via: notcot)
I hope many people will die by eating those poor animals.