Thaindian News

Washington, Aug 28 (IANS) The presence of a huge quantity of plastic garbage in a remote patch of Pacific ocean shocked scientists who have just completed an unprecedented journey to its least-explored part.
“We targeted the highest plastic-containing areas so we could begin to understand the scope of the problem,” said chief scientist of the expedition Miriam Goldstein of Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO).

“Finding so much plastic there was shocking,” said Goldstein. “How could there be this much plastic floating in a random patch of ocean — a thousand miles from land?”

“We also studied everything from phytoplankton to zooplankton to small midwater fish,” said Goldstein. They found that flecks of plastic were abundant and easily spotted against the deep blue seawater in many places.

Among the items retrieved were plastic bottles with a variety of biological inhabitants. The scientists also collected jellyfish called by-the-wind sailors (Velella velella).

Scientists got the first detailed view of plastic debris floating in a remote ocean region as part of the Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition (SEAPLEX).

Later, researchers encountered a large net entwined with plastic and various marine organisms; they also recovered several plastic bottles covered with ocean animals, including large barnacles.

Before this research, little was known about the size of the “garbage patch” and the threats it poses to marine life and the gyre’s biological environment.

The expedition was led by a team of SIO graduate students, with support from University of California Ship Funds, the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Project Kaisei, said a SIO release.

After transiting for six days aboard the Scripps research vessel ‘New Horizon,’ researchers reached their first intensive sampling site on Aug 9. Team members began 24-hour sampling periods using a variety of tow nets to collect debris at several ocean depths.

‘New Horizon’ left its San Diego homeport on Aug 2 for the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, located some 1,000 miles off California’s coast, and returned on Aug 21.