World Council for Nature

More pictures from the Caribbean here: Caribbean plastic sea

“Humans are filling the oceans with an estimated 8 million tons of plastic every year, and that is expected to increase 22 percent by 2025.” Washington Post article


In the same article we read: “Seventy-nine thousand tons of plastic debris, in the form of 1.8 trillion pieces, now occupy an area three times the size of France in the Pacific Ocean between California and Hawaii, a scientific team reported on Thursday.”



Satellite view: California & Oregon to the right, Hawaiian Islands bottom left.


And here is a map, showing the vortices that maintain the trash at sea:

Note there is another concentration of plastic trash near Japan, and one near Alaska.


On this other map, plastic islands are not shown. But it’s easy to guess where they may have formed in other oceans:

Birds mistake plastic for food, and die as their stomachs can’t process it:

Sea turtles too:

Even fish:

Plastic can also hurt or kill in different ways, for instance:

“The most striking aspect of the findings — and perhaps the most damaging — was the large volume of fishing nets or “ghostnets” …  “Entanglement and smothering from nets is one of the most detrimental observed effects we see in nature.”  Washington Post article

And it keeps piling up…

Isn’t it time we did something about it?

The people of Aberporth, a village in Wales, decided to do their bit: anti-plastic campaign
It’s a start, and if their example convinced other villages around the world to do likewise, it could be the start of something big, with governments shifting their attention from wasteful wars and intermittent wind farms to something more responsible.

More on plastic pollution:  The pristine Arctic has become a garbage trap for 300 billion pieces of plastic