About a year ago, I discovered the ecological nightmare known as The North Pacific Gyre. The NPG is an area of the North Pacific where plastic debris either jettisoned from ships or floating out to sea from coastal watersheds collects. Here it stays for near eternity. This area is about the size of the continental United States, and the plastic here is denser than plankton, by a ration of 6 to 1. And it’s not going away. And it’s growing exponentially. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, it just photodegrades, which means it just breaks down into smaller and smaller parts. Marine animals mistake these fragments as food, which can be lethal. Beyond the plastic itself, are the toxins plastic leaches into the water.
A team of activists have built a raft made of out 15,000 plastic bottles and an old cabin from a Cessna. The goal is to sail it to Hawaii to raise awareness of the the truly horrific problem of plastics in our oceans. They are currently at sea, close to their goal. One of the team members of the Junk Raft project, Anna Cummins, will be penning a story for Wend on her own, previous voyage to The North Pacific Gyre and the voyage of Junk Raft for our winter issue. Take some time to learn about this problem, as very few national media outlets have covered it, despite its tragic global environmental implications. A good start is algalita.org.
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