WEBVTT - Where Is The Biggest Garbage Dump On Earth?

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<v Speaker 1>slash brain Stuff. Welcome to brain Stuff from how Stuff Works. Hey,

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<v Speaker 1>brain Stuff, it's Christian Seger. I got a question for you.

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<v Speaker 1>Where is the biggest garbage dump on Earth? It's only

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<v Speaker 1>miles away from California's shores, right in the Pacific Ocean,

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<v Speaker 1>and it's called the Great Pacific garbage Patch. It affects

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<v Speaker 1>our ecosystem by presenting hazards to marine life and the

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<v Speaker 1>fishing industry. Fun right, So what is this Great Pacific

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<v Speaker 1>garbage Patch? Well, it was found by a racing boat

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<v Speaker 1>captain named Charles Moore. When he was saying in from

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<v Speaker 1>Hawaii to California. More noticed millions of pieces of plastics

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<v Speaker 1>surrounding his ship. And the thing is this garbage patch.

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<v Speaker 1>It isn't really that thick. You can't walk on it,

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<v Speaker 1>you can sail through it. Most of the debris isn't

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<v Speaker 1>on the water's surface. Actually, it's more like this plastic

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<v Speaker 1>soup plastic to zooplankton. There is a ratio of six

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<v Speaker 1>to one there in the northern Pacific Ocean. There's an

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<v Speaker 1>ocean gyre, a system of circular ocean currents formed by

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<v Speaker 1>both the Earth's wind patterns and the rotation of the planet,

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<v Speaker 1>and the one in the North Pacific moves slowly in

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<v Speaker 1>a clockwise spiral of currents. It forms an area of

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<v Speaker 1>about twenty million square kilometers that's seven point seven million

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<v Speaker 1>square miles. Now the gyre actually forms two garbage patches.

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<v Speaker 1>There's the Western and Eastern Pacific garbage patches. The eastern

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<v Speaker 1>one floats between Hawaii and California, and it's twice the

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<v Speaker 1>side of Texas. The western one floats between Hawaii and Japan.

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<v Speaker 1>Now they're connected by a six thousand mile long current

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<v Speaker 1>called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Trash debris accumulates there as well,

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<v Speaker 1>and it acts kind of like a highway between the

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<v Speaker 1>two patches. Fishermen and sailors rarely travel through this because

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<v Speaker 1>there is a lack of fish and only some gentle breezes.

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<v Speaker 1>Nearby land masses, however, receive large amounts of this trash

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<v Speaker 1>on their shores. Hawaii, for example, some of the beaches

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<v Speaker 1>there are buried in five to ten feet of trash.

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<v Speaker 1>Some say they can't quantify how much trash there actually

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<v Speaker 1>is in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Others claim it

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<v Speaker 1>holds three point five million tons of waste. There are

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<v Speaker 1>four other similar gyres in the world's ocean, and all

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<v Speaker 1>of them hold trash. So where does the trash in

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<v Speaker 1>the Great Pacific Garbage Patch come from? Well, eight scent

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<v Speaker 1>of ocean trash originates on land, mainly in North America

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<v Speaker 1>and Asia. Rivers and overflowing storm drains carry garbage out

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<v Speaker 1>to the ocean, and also some of it comes from

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<v Speaker 1>the litter that are on beaches now, Trash from America's

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<v Speaker 1>coast takes six years to reach the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

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<v Speaker 1>Trash from Asia, however, takes only a year to get there,

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<v Speaker 1>and it's mostly made of plastic. Plastic has been only

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<v Speaker 1>around for a little over a century, and today we

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<v Speaker 1>use two hundred billion pounds of it a year. Ten

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<v Speaker 1>percent of that ends up in the ocean. Plastic makes

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<v Speaker 1>up roughly eighty percent of ocean waste, and every square

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<v Speaker 1>mile of ocean hosts forty six thousand pieces of plastic.

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<v Speaker 1>These pieces are often less than a millimeter wide, so

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<v Speaker 1>for example, think of like plastic bags, or bottle caps

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<v Speaker 1>or water bottles or styrofoam cups all of those breaking down.

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<v Speaker 1>Like take a plastic bottle for example. It takes five

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<v Speaker 1>hundred years to break something like that down, so it's

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<v Speaker 1>out there for a long time, and they don't wear down,

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<v Speaker 1>they just break into smaller pieces because of sun exposure.

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<v Speaker 1>These tiny pieces are called mermaid tears or nerdles. I

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<v Speaker 1>know it sounds cute, but not so much. The plastics

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<v Speaker 1>in the ocean have different levels of toxicity, and the

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<v Speaker 1>pieces concentrate and absorbed chemicals and poisons that are also

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<v Speaker 1>now in the water, like an oil spill for example.

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<v Speaker 1>The pieces also leach out pollutants, photodegradation, leeches out colorance,

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<v Speaker 1>and chemicals linked to environmental and health problems into the water.

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<v Speaker 1>All right, so how about some examples of how these

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<v Speaker 1>cause hazards for animals. Well, when animals eat the plastic,

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<v Speaker 1>both kinds of chemicals go into their bodies, and these

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<v Speaker 1>chemicals could be passed up the food chain. Plastic garbage

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<v Speaker 1>kills one million birds a year and a hundred thousand

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<v Speaker 1>ocean animals like dolphins and turtles. Now, let's take an

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<v Speaker 1>albatross for instance. It ingests lots of plastic trash on

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<v Speaker 1>Midway Island alone. They can give birth to five hundred

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<v Speaker 1>thousand chicks a year. Two hundred thousand of these chicks

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<v Speaker 1>die because their parents accidentally feed them plastic and what

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<v Speaker 1>happens is that punctures their digestive tracks, killing them. Same

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<v Speaker 1>with loggerhead turtles. They mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, for instance,

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<v Speaker 1>or seals. They get trapped in fishing nuts and drown.

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<v Speaker 1>There's a term for this, it's actually called ghost fishing

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<v Speaker 1>an algae. Because microplastics block sunlight, algae and plankton communities

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<v Speaker 1>are also threatened. This could affect the entire ecosystem or

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<v Speaker 1>food web, with less food to go around in general,

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<v Speaker 1>making seafood less available for humans at the top of

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<v Speaker 1>the food chain. So how do we prevent this? How

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<v Speaker 1>do we clean up this great Pacific garbage patch? Well,

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<v Speaker 1>trawling the ocean for trash is just impossible, and it

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<v Speaker 1>would also harm the plankton that's already there. It would

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<v Speaker 1>take sixty seven ships a year to clean up less

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<v Speaker 1>than one percent of the North Pacific. So the best

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<v Speaker 1>thing that we can do is manage waste on land,

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<v Speaker 1>try to find alternatives to plastic, use biodegradables instead, expand

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<v Speaker 1>recycling programs, to accommodate for more types of plastic and

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<v Speaker 1>buy fewer plastic items, or you can always recycle. Check

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<v Speaker 1>out the brain suff channel on YouTube, and for more

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