As I will describe below this “Patch” causes harm to many types of critters.

The Patch is actually two patches:

https://media.nationalgeographic.org/assets/photos/cc2/bba/cc2bbae1-0699-45b9-b86e-a03a23b28077.jpg


Quote:

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a collection of marine debris in the North Pacific Ocean. Also known as the Pacific trash vortex, the garbage patch is actually two distinct collections of debris bounded by the massive North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. . . . The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also known as the Pacific trash vortex, spans waters from the West Coast of North America to Japan. The patch is actually comprised of the Western Garbage Patch, located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch, located between the U.S. states of Hawaii and California. These areas of spinning debris are linked together by the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, located a few hundred kilometers north of Hawaii. This convergence zone is where warm water from the South Pacific meets up with cooler water from the Arctic. The zone acts like a highway that moves debris from one patch to another. The entire Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bounded by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.  The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) defines a gyre as a large system of swirling ocean currents. Increasingly, however, it also refers to the garbage patch as a vortex of plastic waste and debris broken down into small particles in the ocean.  The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is formed by four currents rotating clockwise around an area of 20 million square kilometers (7.7 million square miles): the California current, the North Equatorial current, the Kuroshio current, and the North Pacific current. The area in the center of a gyre tends to be very calm and stable. The circular motion of the gyre draws debris into this stable center, where it becomes trapped. A plastic water bottle discarded off the coast of California, for instance, takes the California Current south toward Mexico. There, it may catch the North Equatorial Current, which crosses the vast Pacific. Near the coast of Japan, the bottle may travel north on the powerful Kuroshiro Current. Finally, the bottle travels eastward on the North Pacific Current. The gently rolling vortexes of the Eastern and Western Garbage Patches gradually draw in the bottle.

The material in the patch is not in the shape of bottles, bottle caps etc but in the form of microplastics. . . .

In reality, these patches are almost entirely made up of tiny bits of plastic, called microplastics. Microplastics can’t always be seen by the naked eye. Even satellite imagery doesn’t show a giant patch of garbage. The microplastics of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch can simply make the water look like a cloudy soup. This soup is intermixed with larger items, such as fishing gear and shoes.

The seafloor beneath the Great Pacific Garbage Patch may also be an underwater trash heap. Oceanographers and ecologists recently discovered that about 70% of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean.

While oceanographers and climatologists predicted the existence of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it was a racing boat captain by the name of Charles Moore who actually discovered the trash vortex. Moore was sailing from Hawaii to California after competing in a yachting race. Crossing the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Moore and his crew noticed millions of pieces of plastic surrounding his ship.

Marine Debris

No one knows how much debris makes up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre is too large for scientists to trawl. In addition, not all of the trash floats on the surface. Denser debris can sink centimeters or even several meters beneath the surface, making the vortex’s area nearly impossible to measure.

80 percent of plastic in the ocean is estimated to come from land-based sources, with the remaining 20 percent coming from boats and other marine sources. These percentages vary by region, however. A 2018 study found that synthetic fishing nets made up nearly half the mass of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, due largely to ocean current dynamics and increased fishing activity in the Pacific Ocean.

While many different types of trash enter the ocean, plastics make up the majority of marine debris for two reasons. First, plastic’s durability, low cost, and malleability mean that it’s being used in more and more consumer and industrial products. Second, plastic goods do not biodegrade but instead, break down into smaller pieces.

In the ocean, the sun breaks down these plastics into tinier and tinier pieces, a process known as photodegradation. Most of this debris comes from plastic bags, bottle caps, plastic water bottles, and Styrofoam cups.[/quote]

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/great-pacific-garbage-patch/

The Nat. Geographic article is clear and easy to read. Now to get on to the harm to critters part of that article.

Supposedly, the Americans were going to release wax moths that lay waxworms upon their larger section of the plastic garbage patch. Early reports stated that the wax worms were doing excellent work in deteriorating the plastics. But, considering the slow nature of the biodegradation of the plastics eaten by the worms, and the cost of collecting the moths and shipping them out to locations, this is only a temporary measure. The waxworms are reportedly not cocooning to become moths to continue the cycle in large enough numbers. And it seems that the worms are sinking their own plastics they are consuming, and becoming fish food, anyway.

Government organisations are going to keep the collection of plastics in their specially designed boats.

Good news. The Pacific garbage patches are greatly diminished each time Banana-fingers Haji Gordon exits the ocean as long as he doesn't then proceed to manufacture Bondi cigars.

Direct harm the GPGP poses to marine critters (same article as above:)


Quote:

Marine debris can be very harmful to marine life in the gyre. For instance, loggerhead sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellies, their favorite food. Albatrosses mistake plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks, which die of starvation or ruptured organs. Seals and other marine mammals are especially at risk. They can get entangled in abandoned plastic fishing nets, which are being discarded largely due to inclement weather and illegal fishing. Seals and other mammals often drown in these forgotten nets—a phenomenon known as “ghost fishing.”

Plastic items are easy and cheap to make, no way will natural material, hemp and sisal, be used again in any great quantity to make fishing nets. While some plastics can be made biodegradable a lot can’t be—plastic jerrycans for water and petrol etc.

Is direct physical harm the only problem? Unfortunately not!


Quote:

Marine debris can also disturb marine food webs in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. As microplastics and other trash collect on or near the surface of the ocean, they block sunlight from reaching plankton and algae below. Algae and plankton are the most common autotrophs, or producers, in the marine food web. Autotrophs are organisms that can produce their own nutrients from carbon and sunlight. If algae and plankton communities are threatened, the entire food web may change. Animals that feed on algae and plankton, such as fish and turtles, will have less food. If populations of those animals decrease, there will be less food for apex predators such as tuna, sharks, and whales. Eventually, seafood becomes less available and more expensive for people. These dangers are compounded by the fact that plastics both leach out and absorb harmful pollutants. As plastics break down through photodegradation, they leach out colorants and chemicals, such as bisphenol A (BPA), that have been linked to environmental and health problems. Conversely, plastics can also absorb pollutants, such as PCBs, from the seawater. These chemicals can then enter the food chain when consumed by marine life.

AGW is already causing oxygen–free marine “blobs” so the GPGP marine deserts have a bigger effect than what damage they do.

Ha!

https://theplastiki.com/story/

Some bacteria can “eat” plastic. Will find the story I read and posted somewhere, see if there is newer info.

From the “PLastici” article cited two posts above:


Quote:

The origin story of Plastiki starts back in 2006, I found a small passage in an obscure report issued by the United Nations Environment Programme which offered up this astounding fact: Every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic garbage. Every square mile! I thought that this must have been a typo. I even asked UNEP. Nope. The stat turned out to be correct. How could this be?

There is no possibility that the ocean will be saved. There are 6 billion people who are evolving economically and proper waste disposal only occurs after they reach a near-1950s  standard Western state of wealth for the average person.

That won't happen in the next 100 years so there is going to be a growth of trash in the oceans.

The ocean garbage can't be easily removed on a large scale without harming marine life.

There are currently no serious projects that can save the oceans.

Some microbes eat plastic now, these could be bred up and released into the oceans, turn waste into nutrients for plankton.

Quote:

I dug deeper. From reports by Greenpeace and the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, I learned that the vast majority of marine waste is composed of plastic and, further, this pollution congregates in five enormous, slowly spinning ocean eddies. One estimate states that in the Eastern Garbage Patch, a gyre in the North Pacific that’s approximately twice the size of Texas, every pound of plankton is outmatched by 6 pounds of plastic litter.

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 18^th, 2022 at 8:14am:

Quote: I dug deeper. From reports by Greenpeace and the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, I learned that the vast majority of marine waste is composed of plastic and, further, this pollution congregates in five enormous, slowly spinning ocean eddies. One estimate states that in the Eastern Garbage Patch, a gyre in the North Pacific that’s approximately twice the size of Texas, every pound of plankton is outmatched by 6 pounds of plastic litter.

Too little, too late.

Garbage removal from the oceans is vastly overwhelmed by the dumping of new garbage.

The Bondi Cigar lives and is multiplying.

Plastic can be made to decompose so future garbage flows hugely decrease.

Laugh till you cry wrote on Apr 18^th, 2022 at 9:51am:

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 18th, 2022 at 8:14am: Quote: I dug deeper. From reports by Greenpeace and the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, I learned that the vast majority of marine waste is composed of plastic and, further, this pollution congregates in five enormous, slowly spinning ocean eddies. One estimate states that in the Eastern Garbage Patch, a gyre in the North Pacific that’s approximately twice the size of Texas, every pound of plankton is outmatched by 6 pounds of plastic litter. Too little, too late. Garbage removal from the oceans is vastly overwhelmed by the dumping of new garbage. The Bondi Cigar lives and is multiplying.

Whenever we have heavy rain in Melbourne all the
dog turds get washed out into the bay
from our storm water drains.
It's disgusting.
Do they still have Bondi cigars in Sydney?

Dog turds, Bondi cigars are organic and are broken down quickly enough.

If you want cleaner sea water then agitate for wetlands to clean the water—settling ponds, reeds, birds etc.

At the one near here when it was new I was walking Demi off-lead when she chased a duck into the water and chased it by swimming for 3-400 metres. Everybody around that large pond was killing themselves laughing at the over-optimistic dog thinking it could catch a duck by swimming after it  ;D ;D Now we have to have the dog on a lead when walking through the wetlands.

But it does treat a lot of the water from Sturt Creek.

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 18^th, 2022 at 10:37am:

Dog turds, Bondi cigars are organic and are broken down quickly enough.

Not quickly enough if you want to go for a swim.
Remember our bay is not open ocean.   :-[

Yes, not for swimming!

I have a painting of St Kilda Boulevard, don’t think that exists anymore—the painting was clearly set in Victorian or Edwardian times.

Jovial Monk wrote on Apr 18^th, 2022 at 10:43am:

Yes, not for swimming! I have a painting of St Kilda Boulevard, don’t think that exists anymore—the painting was clearly set in Victorian or Edwardian times.

When the bacteria count passes a certain level the beaches
at St Kilda are closed for swimming.

Some Sturt Creek empties into the Patawalunga, when that overflows taking with it lots of stagnant black mud beaches to the north of the Pat. outlet are closed. Take a while to clean the Pat water and bottom I think: the Pat. is dammed with a lock for boats to enter the sea from the Pat (lots of moorings in the Pat.) so water flowing into it drops the silt. The water becomes stagnant—Yuck!

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Patawalonga+River/@-34.9567762,138.5129321,14.01z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x6ab0db23dbdf8be1:0x36103b6404e7d869!8m2!3d-34.9700692!4d138.5134082 shows the Sturt Creek, the Pat and a drainage canal for Adelaide Airport.

Hmmm Google maps calls it the PatawalOnga whereas I have always known it as the PatawalUnga.

Now, there is a bit of good news re the Great Garbage patches in our oceans:


Quote:

Microbes in oceans and soils across the globe are evolving to eat plastic, according to a study. The research scanned more than 200m genes found in DNA samples taken from the environment and found 30,000 different enzymes that could degrade 10 different types of plastic. The study is the first large-scale global assessment of the plastic-degrading potential of bacteria and found that one in four of the organisms analysed carried a suitable enzyme. The researchers found that the number and type of enzymes they discovered matched the amount and type of plastic pollution in different locations.

This is still early days but if these enzymes could be manufactured industrially and spread over the garbage patches that would help or at least be a start. A change so plastics degrade naturally would help as well. “Spring water” bottles are one of the main sources of plastic pollution—why not have the plastic degrade exponentially faster once the cap is opened? Exponentially—at first the very slowest of breakdown of the plastic, 2-3 months after the bottle cap is first removed from the bottle it rapidly breaks down into component molecules?


Quote:

But many plastics are currently hard to degrade and recycle. Using enzymes to rapidly break down plastics into their building blocks would enable new products to be made from old ones, cutting the need for virgin plastic production. The new research provides many new enzymes to be investigated and adapted for industrial use. “We found multiple lines of evidence supporting the fact that the global microbiome’s plastic-degrading potential correlates strongly with measurements of environmental plastic pollution – a significant demonstration of how the environment is responding to the pressures we are placing on it,” said Prof Aleksej Zelezniak, at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden. Jan Zrimec, also at Chalmers University, said: “We did not expect to find such a large number of enzymes across so many different microbes and environmental habitats. This is a surprising discovery that really illustrates the scale of the issue.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/14/bugs-across-globe-are-evolving-to-eat-plastic-study-finds

Original paper the above article is based on: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/mBio.02155-21

A specific microbe:


Quote:

Ideonella sakaiensis is a bacterium from the genus Ideonella and family Comamonadaceae capable of breaking down and consuming the plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) using it as both a carbon and energy source. The bacterium was originally isolated from a sediment sample taken outside of a plastic bottle recycling facility in Sakai City, Japan.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideonella_sakaiensis#:~:text=Ideonella%20sakaiensis%20is%20a%20bacterium,a%20carbon%20and%20energy%20source.

Original paper: [url] Yoshida S, Hiraga K, Takehana T, Taniguchi I, Yamaji H, Maeda Y, et al. (March 2016). "A bacterium that degrades and assimilates poly(ethylene terephthalate)". Science. 351 (6278): 1196–1199. Bibcode:2016Sci...351.1196Y. doi:10.1126/science.aad6359. PMID 26965627. S2CID 31146235.[/url]

As I stated, plastic spring water bottles are a huge source of plastic waste.

Jovial Monk wrote on May 8^th, 2022 at 11:48am:

As I stated, plastic spring water bottles are a huge source of plastic waste.

The way Mum and Dad collect bottles to take to the recycling, any idea of plastic spring water bottles going to waste are a tragedy to my parents. They collect my spring water bottles every 2 weeks before recycling comes. If they could, they would spend hours collecting bottles to cash in at the containers for change centre.

Yeah, I toss mine into a basket, take them to the recycling centre every so often. But what happens then?

Jovial Monk wrote on May 8^th, 2022 at 1:31pm:

Yeah, I toss mine into a basket, take them to the recycling centre every so often. But what happens then?

Then the recycling centre workers make bongs outta them bottles.

Probably!  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

What plastic waste can do:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfeTuVcIhs0&ab_channel=OceanConservationNamibia


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMcPoRi8tSo

Where does the plastic in our oceans come from?


Quote:

Summary 80% of the world’s ocean plastics enter the ocean via rivers and coastlines. The other 20% come from marine sources such as fishing nets, ropes, and fleets. To tackle plastic pollution we need to know where these plastics are coming from. Previous studies suggested that a very small number of rivers were responsible for the vast majority of ocean plastics: 60% to 90% of plastics came from only ten rivers. Higher-resolution mapping and consideration for factors such as climate, terrain, land use, and distance to the ocean suggests that many smaller rivers play a bigger role than we thought. It takes 1,600 of the biggest emitting rivers to account for 80% of plastic inputs to the ocean. It is estimated that 81% of ocean plastics come from Asian rivers. The Philippines alone contribute around one-third of the global total. Since the number of contributing rivers is much higher than previously thought, we will need global efforts to improve waste management and plastic collection rather than targeting only a few of the largest rivers.

https://ourworldindata.org/ocean-plastics

It is too late.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/11/Drake_-_If_You%27re_Reading_This_It%27s_Too_Late.png

All plastic waste discarded doesn't even reach a peak by 2050 if ever.

Incineration is just shifting pollution from the sea to the air and to the land by fallout.

https://www.science.org/do/10.1126/science.aan7121/full/0718_plastic2.png

From the great State of South Australia. . .{drumroll}. . ..


Quote:

South Australian technology that uses bacteria and anaerobic digestion to turn contaminated plastics into biogas, fertiliser and compost is undergoing commercial trials.

About time this was done!


Quote:

The process developed by scientist David Thompson and his company Alkane R&D is being scaled up with plans to treat up to 50 tonnes per week in one system. The units have so far proven successful at breaking down several common household plastics including polyethylene, polypropylene and polystyrene. Major food processor Thomas Foods International has provided Alkane with access to facilities at its former Murray Bridge meat processing site where Thompson has established a lab to conduct a series of small commercial trials. Currently, the three-cubic-metre units at the site are capable of processing about 10kg of plastic waste per hour. “We’ve got three of those in operation and we’ll be getting data off of those over a period of weeks to understand exactly how long it takes to digest plastics at a much larger scale,” Thompson said. “The bacteria inside the anaerobic digesters is attracted to the waste plastic and convert it into biogas, which is a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide and also liquid digestate, which is a fertiliser and also solid digestate, which is a kind of compost. “We take plastics that would normally go to landfill or incineration and we pre-treat the plastic and put it through the reactors for the bacteria to digest the plastic and the contaminants.

https://indaily.com.au/news/business/2022/07/18/plastic-eating-system-looks-to-commercial-ramp-up

Excellent! The more this happens the quicker the backlog of plastic waste, incl the Great Garbage Patches in the oceans can be tackled!

Another project:


Quote:

Tons of Lost Fishing Gear Recovered off Southern California Coast Nearly 91,000 Pounds of Gear Removed and 1,400 Marine Animals Released he California Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project recovered more than 45 tons — 90,968 pounds — of lost, abandoned or otherwise discarded fishing gear along the Santa Barbara, Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego coasts and from around the Channel Islands in 2020 and 2021. The project is a program of the Karen C. Drayer Wildlife Health Center at the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “Lost, abandoned or otherwise discarded fishing gear impacts the global ocean, harming marine wildlife, degrading habitat, and endangering vessels and ocean-users,” said Kirsten Gilardi, director of the WHC and its California Lost Fishing Gear Recovery Project, which works directly with commercial fishers to find and retrieve the gear to reduce its impact. “We’re celebrating World Oceans Day, which is June 8, not only by assessing the achievements of our project to date, but also by continuing this important work to remove the most impactful form of marine debris from southern California’s coastal ocean.”

https://www.ucdavis.edu/climate/news/tons-lost-fishing-gear-recovered-southern-california-coast

A lot more places in a lot more countries should do projects like this, then digest the plastic with tailored bacteria to get biogas, compost etc to use.

Quote:

Tiny turtle pooed ‘pure plastic’ for six days after rescue from Sydney beach Green sea turtle hatchling was missing a flipper when it was found lying on its back in a rockpool and taken to Taronga zoo A baby green sea turtle rescued from a Sydney beach had eaten so much plastic that it took six days for the contents to be excreted, according to Taronga zoo’s wildlife hospital. The 127-gram hatchling was found lying on its back in a rockpool near Sydney’s Tamarama beach. It was missing one of its four flippers, had a chip in another, and had a hole in its shell. Carers said that aside from these injuries, the turtle appeared to be in good physical condition and had no trouble swimming.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/30/tiny-turtle-pooed-pure-plastic-for-six-days-after-rescue-from-sydney-beach

It pooed pure plastic for SIX DAYS! Our garbage!