The great ocean garbage patches

There are five zones in the world’s oceans where massive soups of plastic debris & flotsam float. Scientists say that powerful rotating ocean currents determine the locations of these vortexes in the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, & Indian Oceans. 250,000 tons per year of this plastic debris wends its way to the oceans through sewers, polluted streams & rivers, or from coasts, is swept to sea, & trapped in these swirling vortexes of garbage. They are not islands of hardened trash but confetti like & fragmented shards & objects difficult to recover from the sea. Because ocean fish mistake the debris as food, scientists have warned it inadvisable to eat fish. On Midway Island, a remote island in the North Pacific Ocean, near the north west end of the Hawaiian archipelago, thousands of baby albatrosses lie dead, their bodies filled with plastic debris they mistook as food. This is an environmental alert way beyond the canary in the mine. (Photo by Chris Jordan)