[OKC] From Green Lantern: Sea Trash

[Miles, Karen]

Sea Trash


Should we bother cleaning up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?


By Nina Shen Rastogi
Updated Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2010, at 7:57 AM ET 

________________________________

I keep reading about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that floating
island of trash between California and Hawaii. Can we ever clean it up?
And should we even bother? 

The Lantern always thought the Garbage Patch
<http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/patch.html>  was a huge, waterborne
landfill-sort of like a massive hair clog in a big drain. In reality,
it's not so much an island of trash as a thin, soupy area of litter,
mostly in the form of tiny flecks of plastic, studded here and there
with old fishing gear and children's toys. (It's also not the only
trashy area <http://marinedebris.noaa.gov/info/patch.html>  in the
Pacific.) Even if you were to sail right through the Patch, the water
itself probably wouldn't look too remarkable, unless you scooped some up
<http://theoystersgarter.com/2007/10/23/why-there-are-no-pictures-of-the
-north-pacific-trash-gyre/>  and looked at it closely. So cleaning up
this part of the ocean isn't as simple as you might have imagined.

Article continues at URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2243538/

 

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