Gyre garbage patches and plastic-eating mycrobes - The unusual fate of plastics in our oceans
The accumulation of plastic waste in world's oceans is the ecological problem of massive proportions with plastics being dumped into the sea at the rate of one truckload per minute.
It then floats freely, carried away by the ocean currents either to get pushed out to the coastline by wind and wave action like on the super-remote island of Midway or concentrating in one of the worlds five ocean gyres creating spectacular and apocalyptic formations like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, considered the largest garbage dump on the planet.
Of course the story doesn't end there - the plastic then slowly degrades mostly by ultra violet spectrum of the sunlight and breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces that at the same time release toxic endocrine-disrupting chemicals like bisphenols and phtalates and tend to attract and accumulate other toxic chemicals from the oceans.
Plastic debris thus makes a toxic soup that degrades the food-chain on all levels - from larger parts directly killing all sorts of animals (like in the image) to being consumed by smaller animals and plankton, eventually delivering concentrated toxins to those on the top of the food-chain... including of course those responsible for the whole problem - us.
However, scientists are lately being baffled by one unusual discovery - large amounts of plastics are disappearing from the oceans. Surveying the oceans for plastics scientists only discovered one hundredth of the expected amount which led them to a conclusion that some sort of plastic consuming microbes evolved that are capable of consuming vast amounts of the material. This is not necessarily such a good news as you might at first expect because as this high microbe activity breaks down plastic waste food-chain toxifies with ever increasing pace.
Several solutions are on the table to help solve the problem including the Ocean Cleanup (curiously enough started by a teenage boy). Solutions however need to be implemented fast and are only supplementary to the first and only reasonable cause of action - stop overproducing plastics and quit dumping it into the oceans.
See some of the concept designs below
Please read, discuss, resteem & quit dumping plastics into the oceans. Thank you!
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Thank you so much for sharing all this information! that's great! All the best! Waiting for more posts! :)