April 7, 2009

Souvenirs from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

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Photo from VICE TV's piece, Garbage Island.

When I was digging around  for Paradoxical Sleep, I wanted to find out what happened after San Jose’s Guadalupe River, after the South Bay of Northern California.  The whirling gyre of nasty pollution information literally culminated in this vortex: The North Pacific Garbage Patch, an area the size of Texas that’s a confluence of ocean currents, north of Hawaii. Maybe it’s twice the size of Texas: it’s an undulating swirling mass;  it’s a soup of industrial and consumer plastics; some are plastic pellets from manufacturing, small enough to be mistaken for plankton and eaten by marine animals;  lots are large enough to comprise a bounty in a net haul.

VBS TV “TOXIC  – GARBAGE ISLAND – Part 1 of 12

Link to page for rest of series.