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Friday, July 19, 2013

FFotW: Great Pacific Garbage Patch - A world of plastic trash

As you may know from some older posts I am a scuba diver and love nature (especially the sea). Today I came across a very interesting TED talk about the problems with the Great Pacific Garbage Patch of which more later. 

Great Pacific Garbage Patch schematic
Source: Good Infographics
If you don't know what the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is: Have a look at the infographic, it explains pretty good what is happening there. Just imagine a huge mass of plastic floating in our seas. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is only the biggest one so far, there are many more floating and circulating around the sea. Its pretty difficult to get the real size of these beasts and they are measured by the amount of plastic floating in these areas but even this is rather difficult because some of the garbge sinks to the ground or is grinded down to a microscopic level.

Masses of plastic trash
So don't expect something like the picture! The tricky part is that the big masses of plastic grind themselves over time to tiny pieces which are nearly invisible to see from boat or plane and that natural inhabitants either eat this stuff (which could not be digested and causes death) or miss their regular food because the plastics hinder their vision. If they don't die from the plastics in their stomachs, the next in the food chain gets the plastics and so on and so on until we (as "crown" of evolution) come and catch the bigger predators.
In the end we pollute ourselves with our junk...

So why all this babbling in a FFotW? Because Boyan Slat, a young student has a visionary idea of how we could solve this problem. He also explains the stuff I did with some shocking pictures.


Something to think about, no?


So long,
Paradox0n

P.S.: Since I got the second wave package from the Mantic KS I will probably do some pictures of the stuff over the weekend. Maybe I'll try myself at an unboxing video :)

2 comments:

  1. Saw your blog on Faeit212 and agree with you on the death of the sea and our natural habitat. As a diver myself I am also put off when I see more plastic than fish.I like what you are doing with your blog and will add you to my blog roll and would appreciate being added to yours.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for your comment. All the diving bases I visited do really care and collect garbage when they find it. Here in Germany the diving clubs organise cleaning events e.g. at the Bodensee to keep a clean environment. Thats pretty cool I think.

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