Garbage Patch

Garbage Patch

September 2017

Today we went to a lecture about the Garbage Patch in the Pacific Ocean between San Diego, California and Hawaii. My Dad has never told me about the Garbage Patches because, quote Dad, “I wanted it to have a huge impact on you”. The lecture was about 45 minutes long and was very good. Judson Croft was the speaker. He is from New Zealand and is very interested in the ocean. If you are one of the people who don’t know what Garbage Patches are (like I was before the lecture), then let me tell you what I found out.

There are many parts in the world’s ocean’s where there is tons of trash like the little plastic things that hold your six packs of soda or the to-go coffee cups that get thrown in. There was even a container ship that lost a container full of plastic toys.

Those plastic soda things can look like something different to a seal or a whale. They can accidentally get stuck around the seal’s neck and it can suffocate. Or the whale could think the plastic was food and eat it. The plastic goes into the whale’s stomach and if he kept eating plastic things then he would be so full that he would not be hungry and eventually he would starve to death.

Another danger to animals in the ocean are the fishing nets that the fishermen lose. The fishing net that the fishermen use is practically invisible to fish and so if the net gets lost it doesn’t mean that it’s gone, it’s still in the ocean killing lots of sea life. The fish’s gills get stuck in the “invisible net” and it’ s body is bigger than the fish’s head so it can’t just swim straight out and the fish can’t back out because it’s gills are caught in the net so the fish dies. And it is not just one fish that dies. Since the “invisible” net is miles long and miles wide hundreds of fish die. The net to slowly sinks down from all the fish that are weighing it down.  Some sharks come by and they’re like “yay, free food”. The sharks slowly eat the fish and the “invisible” net slowly floats back to the top. Then more fish get caught and then it goes down and then it goes back up and more fish get caught, etc. This happens for years and years because if the fishermen are looking for their net when the net is below the ocean then they cannot find it. Thousands of fish lose their lives in this cycle. And that is just one fishing net; there are thousands out there.

At the end of his lecture, Judson Croft showed a video of a guy who saved a humpback whale that had fishing nets all over the it’s body. The guy and his crew spent hours cutting off the netting and when they were all done the whale waved it’s tale up and down and jumped up in the air about 40 times because it was so happy that it was free.

Here is a link to the video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcXU7G6zhjU

If you are wondering after reading this blog how you can help make the garbage patches cleaner please search on Google for ways you can help.