The Red, White, and Green

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Right now, we’re all focused on the immediate threat of the BP oil spill. After all, 60,000 barrels of crude a day are pretty tough to ignore. But there’s another, more insidious type of oil pollution threatening the future of our oceans, and that’s the accumulation of petroleum-based plastics.

You may have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a massive floating landfill (roughly the size of Texas) in the Pacific Ocean comprised of 3.5 million tons of plastic trash — but that’s not the only one: There are four other patches, or gyres, spanning our globe.

Amazingly, there hasn’t been a whole lot of media coverage of these five gyres; maybe images of six-pack rings and plastic rope floating in the water aren’t as dramatic as, say, those of birds and other marine life drowning in thick oil. But that doesn’t mean this trash isn’t having as equally a detrimental effect: Forty-four percent of all seabird species have been documented with plastic in or around their bodies, leading to blockages, starvation, and even death.

This, from the new organization 5 Gyres, which is partnering with organizations like the Algalita Marine Research Foundation and the Surfrider Foundation to actively explore and document the plastic pollution in our oceans.

Want to see for yourself what an oceanic garbage patch looks like? Check out the video, above, from a 5 Gyres expedition to the North Atlantic Gyre earlier this year. Then, click here to find out ways to reduce your own plastic trash footprint.

–Jennifer Grayson

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