The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch capture

What is the most efficient way to conduct research about the great pacific garbage patch?

“It is that range of biodiversity that we must care for- not just one or two stars.” – David Attenborough. It is estimated that 1.15 to 2,14 million tonnes of plastic are entering the ocean each year through rivers. It is said that by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish. One of the most plastic polluted oceans is the Pacific Ocean, between the continents of Asia and Australia.

 The reason for this is that in the Pacific Ocean lies the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, this is the largest of the five accumulation zones located between California and Hawaii. It has been described as a soup of microplastics and is constantly growing in extent and length. 46% of the total mass is made of fishing nets and is 1.6 million km which is 3 times the size of France. Many organizations have launched various expeditions to estimate how much garbage is accumulated inside the great pacific garbage patch today. 

So far, the companies who have launched an expedition to research or cleanup The Great Pacific Garbage Patch are Greenpeace and The Ocean Cleanup. In my current blog, I am going to list the different methods used to clean up or research The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Then I will compare them to each other by analyzing the different methods and techniques, and the efficiency rate. By the end of this blog, I hope to deduce the most efficient method of conducting this research.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Currently, the 2 organizations that have launched an expedition on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch are Greenpeace and The Ocean Cleanup. Over the course of three years, The Ocean Cleanup has launched several data collection missions. 

These included: The multi-level trawl expedition where they analyzed the depth at which buoyant plastic debris may be vertically distributed, The Mega Expedition using many trawls at once and finally, an Air Expedition that involved the use of a plane flying at low altitude to observe the debris from above. 

Greenpeace launched an expedition in which they pulled 5 gyres manta trawl which collected microplastics.  The crew would also deploy satellite trackers and a crew of divers to capture the occasional larger chunks of garbage. So overall, the methods that have been used so far are skimming the ocean surface with a single small trawl, dragging various sizes of trawls altogether in a large sequence, aerial research and individual divers collecting and documenting microplastics.

Pacific Garbage Patch, trawl

Using individual diving crews is a method Greenpeace used during their expedition. In this single diving, crews collect the plastic trash by hand, which is a very accurate way of collecting the bigger plastics. However, this is not a reliable method when conducting research on The Great Pacific Garbage Patch as it is difficult to collect microplastics by hand and the crews cannot cover large areas.

 The single trawl was one of the first methods used to pick up microplastics in The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Both organizations have used this method in their expeditions. It is reliable when picking up various microplastics, however, it is not efficient in picking up the larger debris that float around in the gyre. By using a single trawl, it does not cover a lot of surface area and cannot be used to accurately depict the total surface area of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

 The mega expedition which was launched by the Ocean Cleanup comprised of a number of ships all in a line scooping up plastics in The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The results of this expedition cover more surface area, which gives scientists more accurate data on just how much plastic makes up The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This method is more accurate compared to only using a single trawl. However, one of the flaws of this method is that it is one experiment which costed big amounts of money; therefore, you cannot conduct the mega expedition regularly to compare sets of data.

the mega expedition

The trawl method as a whole is not very accurate though because they can only pick up small sections on the microplastic gyre. Aerial research is one of the newest techniques being used and was first launched by the Ocean Cleanup. 

This was achieved by converting a former military plane into a high-tech research facility. A sensor was added to the bottom of the plane to detect the different debris in The Garbage Patch. After collecting the data, the scientists calculated the mass of the object. This is a very accurate way of collecting data in my opinion; the sensors in the plane pick up all the plastics, no matter its size. The plane can also cover large areas, and moreover this method can also be used multiple times. 

Using individual diving crews is a method Greenpeace used during their expedition. In this single diving, crews collect the plastic trash by hand, which is a very accurate way of collecting the bigger plastics. However, this is not a reliable method when conducting research on The Great Pacific Garbage Patch as it is difficult to collect microplastics by hand and the crews cannot cover large areas.

TheOceanCleanup

In conclusion, I think that the most efficient way to collect data about The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is by using the aerial method because it is easy to conduct; you just have to fly over The Great Pacific Garbage Patch while the scanner does the work for you. You can constantly keep using this method as you don’t have to pay for a new plane every time. It covers large areas of the ocean, therefore resulting in more accurate data. In my opinion, using a research plane is the most efficient way to collect data and research further into The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

None of the above images belong to me. I have collected all my data from theoceancleanup.com and www.greenpeace.org.uk

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This Is My 50 first Blog!

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