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Journeys to and from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

It’s Day 2 of a 12-day journey by sea to a destination that doesn’t make too many Top 10 “must-see” lists yet manages to get bigger and bigger, and increasingly more famous. The notorious site is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the intrepid travelers are a group of researchers from the University of Hawaii who, aboard the good ship Kilo Moana, are on a Survey of Underwater Plastic and Ecosystem Response (SUPER) cruise.

Explore the SUPER cruise site, with forthcoming blog posts, to learn about the University of Hawaii researchers’ trip to better understand the area and the debris that collects there.

If you haven’t heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, often referred to as a “plastic soup,” it’s basically one disgustingly huge world dumpster. A body of plastics and other debris, the trashy mass floats along an area called the North Pacific Gyre in the Pacific Ocean, between California and Hawaii. Ever-growing, reported estimates are that it is double the continental U.S. in size.

Other news this week on the Patch: Two mariners who set off in June 2008 aboard “The Junk Raft,” a watercraft partly composed of 15,000 plastic bottles, plan to arrive in Ala Wai Harbor, near Honolulu, Hawaii, this week. The purpose of their trip is to draw attention to the problem of plastic waste in the Pacific — and the danger it poses to the ocean environment, marine life and, ultimately, us. Read the Junk Raft blog, full of interesting information, videos and photos.

For a fun animation on the trash patch, see Gorilla in the Greenhouse. The Web show’s pilot episode, “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” is about a group of kids and a wise green gorilla who take on evil Dr. Hufflebot’s attempt to create a floating empire called “Baglandia.”

- Susan Derby, Special to the Los Angeles Times

[Photo: Plastic soup; JunkRaft.Blogspot.com]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26, 2008 at 10:07 am by Susan Derby and is filed under California, Eco-Travel, Global, Hawaii, Islands & Beaches, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.