Plastic Vortex or Great Pacific Garbage Patch

I'm sure most people have heard of the "Plastic Vortex" - An island supposed to be twice the size of Texas completely made up of plastic and other trash. Also known as the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"

en.wikipedia.org...

I was curious if anybody had links for a picture of the ENTIRE thing? For awhile now I've been looking for an "overall" picture of the vortex with not a single one to be found. While google image searching all I can find is small pictures of a little bit of trash/plastic, or large collections of trash and plastic in 3rd world countries that people claim is the Plastic Vortex (oobviously it's not, as you can see the whole city in the background. There is no city in the middle of the Pacific ocean)

If anyone could provide some pics that would be great!

Thanks!

I don't have any pics but I will tell you that there is a documentary about it..I saw it about a year ago on either History channel, Discover or possible TLC..I'm sorry that I don't have the name or title of the show..but I did watch it as the fishermen took this guy out there and filmed them hauling in all the garbage. I think that this fishermen had made it his full time job to try to "clean" up the mess. It was pretty disgusting. There were even things like toothbrushes and disposable razors floating around.

I think this might be it....

That is definitely it. Shocking and sad really how bad it is out there. People expect this floating island where you can jump out of your boat and chill on the plastic. In reality the water now IS plastic.

reply to post by James1982


Heres a report what there talking about is micro plastics. So no your not going to see pictures of floating island of trash.

We recycle plastic right...?

Why oh why doesn't anyone get a small boat or a few, with gigantic nets. They can scoop the whole vortex and recycle the stuff...


Even if the costs are not earned back, why isn't there some kind of environmental group doing it ?

Hey thanks for the vid link.

I too was wondering why someone doesn't go take all the plastic and recycle it, but from the research I've done it appears that a lot of plastics used are not recyclable. Which then begs the question, WHY do we not only use plastics that are able to be recycled?

Originally posted by Fiverz
People expect this floating island where you can jump out of your boat and chill on the plastic. In reality the water now IS plastic.

You see that is exactly what I was expecting, due to the language used by the various articles I'm reading. I think it's a bit misleading to say an "island of plastic' when it seems it's just regular water that is saturated with a ton of tiny pieces of plastic.

While a plastic island sounds more sensational, which is probably why they use that language, the truth is in fact WORSE because these small particles are easily eaten by various fish and birds, which brings these chemicals into the food chain and makes its way up to us.

I'm still surprised, I don't really see a ton of coverage on this issue, and it seems to be one of the biggest ones. Polluting the oceans is a sure fire way to basically infect the entire food chain, as most everything starts there.

It just boggles the mind that we just throw trash in the ocean, if that's what's causing this. As bad as the problems with landfills are, they would be a heck of a lot better than tossing it in the ocean.

Definitely seems like an easy step would just to stop using non-recyclable plastics, and make sure to recycle the plastics we do use.