By Kathy Marks and Daniel Howden
A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.
The vast expanse of debris - in effect the world's largest rubbish dump - is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting "soup" stretches from about 500 nautical miles (900km) off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.
Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or "trash vortex", believes that about 100 million tons of flotsam are circulating in the region.
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'What goes into the ocean goes into these animals...' Marcus Eriksen, a research director of the US-based Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which Moore founded, said yesterday: "The original idea that people had was that it was an island of plastic garbage that you could almost walk on. It is not quite like that. It is almost like a plastic soup. It is endless for an area that is maybe twice the size of the United States."
Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer and a leading authority on flotsam, has tracked the build-up of plastics in the seas for more than 15 years and compares the trash vortex to a living entity: "It moves around like a big animal without a leash."
When that animal comes close to land, as it does at the Hawaiian archipelago, the results are dramatic. "The garbage patch barfs, and you get a beach covered with this confetti of plastic," he added.
The "soup" is actually two linked areas, either side of the islands of Hawaii, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches. About one-fifth of the junk - which includes everything from footballs and kayaks to Lego blocks and bags - is thrown off ships or oil platforms.
'...and on to your dinner plate'
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