More than one million seabirds are estimated to die each year from toxins emitted and from entanglement with or filling their stomachs with plastic debris.
Plastic bottles and bags dumped from ships and from storm water drains and rivers float in the oceans and the wind and currents bring them all to this great revolving Pacific Gyre. Plastic ropes and discarded fishing nets are part of it too. Scientists estimate that there is around three million tons of plastic debris there.
The sun and the oceans have broken the plastic down. As the plastic degrades it releases many toxins which get into the food chain. It also breaks up into tiny pieces which are attractive to sea birds and marine creatures. This plastic junk builds up in their stomachs till they die. Some of the particles are microscopic and filter feeders like whales are swallowing them.
"Ghost fishing" from thrown away nets are still trapping fish and marine animals. An estimated 100,000 turtles and other animals die each year, and more than one million birds.
No. The items in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are not bonded together.
1,000 years
87,000 tons, according to the NY Times: See article: "The 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' Is Ballooning, 87,000 Tons of Plastic and Counting"
1997 the effect of water pollution on ecosystem
It is located in an area call the North Pacific Gyre, which is a patch of the North Pacific Ocean that covers thousands of square miles roughly between the United States and Japan and reaching toward Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. It's called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch because the prevailing ocean currents tend to swirl around this patch of ocean, causing all manner of floating debris to be concentrated in the gyre.
Indiscriminate dumping.
No. There has been a field of garbage floating in the Pacific for years as the result of accumulated litter.
Twice the size of Texas.
Great pacific garbage patch.... It's where thousands of tons worth of waste has gathered in a big floating mess
1,000 years
Idk im asking u guys to answer all my questions so I WONT ANSWER YOURS
As far as I can find it is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, although I am also in search of a more satisfying answer for this, if i find one, I'll repost an answer