Protecting Our Oceans and Preserving Marine Life

Where ever you go in the world there will always be evidence of humans left behind. There are garbage scattered all around the world because of us humans. The small wrappers, plastic bottles, and papers that people litter can find its way into sewers, drains, and water ways which can lead to the ocean. The worlds largest garbage dump is called the Eastern Garbage Patch also called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, it is located in the central North Pacific Ocean. The exact size of this garbage patch is unknown, it can range from the size of Texas to twice the size of the United States.





The plants and animals that live in the area are also in danger. Different types of chemicals are destroying the plant life around that area, the animals could also absorb those chemicals and they could also swallow the garbage. There were animals found with plastic objects inside their stomaches, birds, fishes, and many other species are affected by this problem.



This is obviously causing a huge problem to the environment. Many people are trying to do their part to help reduce the amount of garbage that is in the pacific garbage patch. Richard Sundance Owen formed the Environmental Cleanup Coalition (ECC) in 2008. ECC work together with other groups to find ideas and methods on how remove the garbage. The Junk Raft project started by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation was to create awareness of the vast amount of garbage floating around in the ocean, the raft collected over 15, 000 old water bottles. Project Kaisei was the first garbage clean up project, it was launched in March 19, 2009. They sent two ships the "Horizon" and a smaller ship called "Kaisei" were sent to study the North Pacific Gyre.


Although not the problem has not been solved completely, those projects have taken a huge step forward on cleaning up the ocean. It make take years for scientist to fully understand how much and how far the garbage has accumulated inside the Gyre and maybe more for them to develop a safe way to clean it up.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Kaisei
• http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/05/first-great-pacific-garbage-patch-clean-up-effor-to-begin-next-month.php
• http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Ocean/Moore-Trashed-PacificNov03.htm

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