Read the passage.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
There’s been talk that there is a giant pile of trash floating out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. According to some reports, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is supposedly twice the size of the state of Texas. This has led many people to envision a humongous pile, both in height and breadth. However, this is a gross exaggeration. True, there is trash floating around in the Pacific, but it’s quite different from what has been portrayed in the media. Nonetheless, there is still cause for concern.
In an area of the northern Pacific Ocean where the northern jet stream and the southern trade winds create a high pressure zone, the winds circulate in opposite directions. These winds create an area of 7.7 million square miles of circling water called the North Pacific Gyre, which covers most of the northern Pacific Ocean. In the middle of the gyre are pieces of plastic garbage. This garbage isn’t a huge pile of floating pieces of trash, people’s tossed-away coolers, broken pieces of furniture, or boat seat cushions. It’s more insidious than that.
Researching the Garbage Patch
Miriam Goldstein, a marine biologist with Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California, has conducted many research trips to the garbage patch 1,000 miles off the California coast. She even went swimming in it. The garbage patch contains millions of small and microscopic pieces of plastic about the size of confetti. Most pieces are not visible to the naked eye. The plastic is spread over approximately 1,930 square miles in the North Pacific Gyre. What’s alarming is not the size of the plastic but the sheer volume of it. And the amount of plastic has increased over the past 40 years. In addition, there are four more major gyres around the world that also attract plastic.
And where does this plastic come from? It comes from people who carelessly drop plastic water or soda bottles or plastic bags into rivers and streams and into sewers that lead to them. These items move with the currents out into the open ocean where they eventually break down.
Goldstein and her team set out to discover how much plastic there really is. Using a very fine net, they trawled the surface of the ocean. They took samples from various locations over a 1,700-square-mile area. During one trip, they found plastic pieces in 117 out of 119 samples. On another trip, there was plastic in all 28 of the samples they had taken. Since they used the same kind of trawling nets and the same methods that were used by scientists in the 1970s, they were able to make comparisons. It was clear that there have been increases in plastic density over the years.
The Effect on Ocean Creatures
There is concern about how this plastic is affecting birds and fish and the ocean ecosystem. Birds and fish think the plastic is food, so they eat it. But Goldstein thinks that it’s difficult to determine if the plastic these animals eat is actually killing them. Plastic has been found in the stomachs of dead albatrosses. These are seabirds that usually feed on squid, schooling fish, or handouts or garbage from mariners. But the studies have found that the plastic correlates with poor nutrition. According to Goldstein, scientists don’t know if there are birds that eat the plastic and survive. Live fish have been found with plastic in their stomachs, too. It was unclear though if the fish suffered from malnutrition or were unharmed by the plastic since they could excrete it from their bodies. Since the digestive systems of fish and albatrosses differ, it’s possible that plastic may harm albatrosses but not harm the fish.
As plastic breaks down, it releases chemicals that can affect water quality, animals, and people. Consequently, there’s concern about what effect the plastic has on the ocean and the environment.
Surprisingly, there are some creatures benefiting from all this plastic. Water skater insects, small crabs, barnacles, and bryozoans, a type of invertebrate, are thriving. Marine biologist Erik Zettler refers to these creatures as occupying the plastisphere because they thrive in an environment with hard surfaces in the water. Barnacles and bryozoans form colonies on the surfaces of ship hulls, rocks, shells, or feathers. But since these are limited in the open ocean, the plastic has provided a new surface for these animals. Water skaters lay their large, yellow eggs on the plastic. The eggs provide food for fish and crabs. However, the abundance of water skater eggs could lead to an imbalance in the ecosystem because water skaters and crabs may need to compete with local ocean creatures for food.
It isn’t the plastic that is worrisome as much as what is floating on top of the plastic. The hard surface of the plastic pieces can help transport invasive species. The pieces are easy to move and could be introduced to the coral reefs of the Northwest Pacific Islands.
A Possible Solution
Scientists don’t know how deeply submerged the plastic is in the water. They also don’t know if it’s sitting on the ocean floor and how much of it is down there. But what can be done about all this plastic? A 19-year-old Dutch engineering student came up with a possible solution.
While in Greece on vacation, Boyan Slat, then 17, became frustrated while diving when he saw more plastic bags in the water than fish. He wondered, “Why can’t we clean this up?” When he returned home, Slat dedicated half a year to researching plastic pollution. This led to his passive cleanup concept. He presented his concept at a conference put on by TED, a nonprofit organization devoted to "ideas worth spreading."
Slat’s concept involved attaching an array of floating barriers and platforms to the seabed. This array would force the plastic—driven by the wind and currents—to become concentrated in one area. Sea life is not harmed because nets are not used and the current flows underneath the angled booms, or floating barriers, allowing buoyant organisms to float away. The booms were designed to move with the motion of the waves. The plastic, which is lighter than water, collects in front of the barrier. Slat’s method is called Ocean Cleanup Array.
Using simulations, Slat’s team calculated that approximately 80 percent of the plastic, including submerged particles, coming in contact with the boom will be captured. In one test, a half ton of plastic was collected along the Hawaiian shoreline. The plastic was not too degraded, so it is suitable to be turned into oil. On June 3, 2014, The Ocean Cleanup, Slat’s company, released the results of its 530-page feasibility study report. The report indicated that this concept is a feasible method of cleaning up the plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in just 10 years.
However, some ocean researchers and environmentalists feel the Ocean Cleanup Array won’t work. They believe that anchoring something to the seabed, especially at a depth of 4,000 meters, almost 2.5 miles, is difficult. In addition, the plastic is photodegraded and brittle and probably cannot be recycled. Photodegraded means that the materials have broken down into smaller pieces that absorb toxins. Stiv Wilson, policy and campaign director of the ocean conservation nonprofit group 5Gyres, admires Slat for what he is trying to do. However, Wilson thinks that instead of creating more plastics and trying to find a way to eliminate them, we should be looking for ways to not use plastics at all.
In the meantime, scientists and researchers will have to find a way to remove the plastic that is already swirling around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the other four gyres.
Question
Which statement best reflects the central idea of this text?
Responses
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of plastic waste in the ocean that people should work to clean up and prevent in the future.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of plastic waste in the ocean that people should work to clean up and prevent in the future.,
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers a large area and is detrimental to some sea life but beneficial to others.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch covers a large area and is detrimental to some sea life but beneficial to others.
It might be possible to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with a system created by a determined teenager.
It might be possible to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with a system created by a determined teenager.
To avoid further polluting the ocean and adding to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, humans must avoid the use of plastic.
To avoid further polluting the ocean and adding to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, humans must avoid the use of plastic.
The statement that best reflects the central idea of this text is:
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of plastic waste in the ocean that people should work to clean up and prevent in the future.