Second great garbage patch found
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Plastic Vortex, a Texas-sized gyre of plastic formed by ocean currents, has been known and well-documented for over a decade. But what about all the plastic in the Atlantic? Researchers are warning of a new blight on the ocean: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over thousands of ...
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Plastic Vortex, a Texas-sized gyre of plastic formed by ocean currents, has been known and well-documented for over a decade. But what about all the plastic in the Atlantic?
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch or Plastic Vortex, a Texas-sized gyre of plastic formed by ocean currents, has been known and well-documented for over a decade. But what about all the plastic in the Atlantic?
Researchers are warning of a new blight on the ocean: a swirl of confetti-like plastic debris stretching over thousands of square miles (kilometers) in a remote expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
The floating garbage – hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents – was documented by two groups of scientists who trawled the sea between scenic Bermuda and Portugal’s mid-Atlantic Azores islands.
Similar patches are thought to exist in the South Atlantic and South Pacific oceans.
Joshua Keating is a former associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating
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