Author: Carolyn Gramling / Source: Science News for Students
Watch out, ocean trash! On September 8, a project to scoop plastic debris from the ocean launched its first phase from Alameda, Calif. Called Ocean Cleanup, its creators claim it that by 2040 can remove 90 percent of the plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. If true, that would be a lot of plastic.
When researchers visited the that so-called garbage patch back in 2015, they estimated that it covered some 1.6 million square kilometers (620,000 square miles). That’s an area twice the size of Texas.
Boyan Slat first proposed Ocean Cleanup’s system in a 2012 TED talk. At the time, he was just 18 years old. The Dutch-born inventor’s system consists of many floating tubes. Known as booms, they form a long, snaking line. This barrier will collect floating plastic trash so people can come by and retrieve it. People have donated more than $30 million to fund the project, based in Delft, the Netherlands.
Not everyone, however, thinks it’s a great idea. Some researchers worry the project could harm ocean life. There’s also the issue of the targets’ size. Ocean Cleanup is designed to capture pieces of plastic ranging from a few millimeters in diameter to tens of meters across, such as fishing nets. In fact, bits smaller than half a centimeter across — so-called microplastics — make up the majority of ocean plastic. The project has not been designed to catch such small bits.
Critics also worry the project will take attention and money away dealing with the root cause of this pollution: too much plastic waste in the first place.
Laurent Lebreton is Ocean Cleanup’s lead oceanographer. He led a study of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This is an infamous collection of trash in the Pacific Ocean. The trash collects in a vast ocean swirl known as the North Pacific gyre.
A new study estimates that this patch includes about 1.8 trillion pieces of debris. Buoyant plastics, such as polyethylene (Pah-lee-ETH-eh-leen) and polypropylene (Pah-lee PRO-puh-leen), dominate. Most are pieces smaller than half a centimeter (0.2 inch) across. But by mass, most of the bits of plastic —90 percent — are pieces 5 centimeters or bigger.
Lebreton’s team shared its findings March 22 in Scientific Reports.
It’s those larger pieces that Ocean Cleanup has been designed to snag. Its line of floating booms 600 meters (almost 2,000 feet) long will drift on the water, driven by winds, waves and ocean currents. Currents will naturally push the line of booms into a u-shape. And that…
The post Enormous floating barrier will corral ocean trash appeared first on FeedBox.