The actual discovery of the patch was made by a racing boat captain, Charles Moore. Moore was sailing from Hawaii to California after competing in a yachting race. Crossing the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Moore and his crew noticed millions of pieces of plastic surrounding his ship. "That set off alarm bells and made me want to monitor it, made me want to quantify it, made me want to get a better handle on it, " said Capt. Moore (Bialik, Carl). He dedicated the Algalita Marine Research Foundation that he had founded to studying this region of the ocean and exposing its plastic problem. Scientists have collected up to 1.9 million bits per square mile of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (National Geographic). "A decade ago, researchers found that the ratio of plastic to zooplankton by mass was six to one. A more-recent visit turned up an increase in this ratio, to 46 to one, according to the foundation's Web site. But that is an average of the ratio at each testing site, which included some very high ratios, probably anomalies " (Bialik Carl). Article after article, one thing that was always different was the estimated size of the patch. Some say it is the size of Quebec, others say it's twice the size of Texas, it has even been said by some to be the size of the United States. The debate on the size of this catastrophic garbage island continues, but one thing remains the same throughout all the media coverage and discussions, our need and exceeding use of plastics is the problem here. .
Assertion- We love plastic because it's cheap, light and durable. The problem is that it doesn't go away (Dumas, Daisy). Try, if you can, to spend at least five minutes without the company of plastic. We sit on it, wash in it, eat from it, drink from it, look through it, play with it and pay with it. Plastics are literally everywhere. What was once seen as the durable, lightweight, cheap and easily made answer to our needs and wants has now become an annoyance that we just can't get rid of.
