Thu 4 Mar 2010
Huge Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic Too
Posted by Justin Daubendiek under All News & Events, Enviroment, News & Events
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Photograph by Peter Cade, Getty Images
Huge Garbage Patch Found in Atlantic Too
Photograph by Peter Cade, Getty Images
Article Credit: Richard A. Lovett for National Geographic News
Billions of bits of plastic are accumulating in a massive garbage patch in the Atlantic Ocean – a lesser known cousin to the Texas-size trash vortex in the Pacific, scientists say.
“Many people have heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” said Kara Lavender Law, an oceanographer at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
“But this issue has essentially been ignored in the Atlantic.”
The newly described garbage patch sits hundreds of miles off the North American coast. Although its east-west span is unknown, the patch covers a region between 22 and 38 degrees north latitude – roughly the distance from Cuba to Virginia.
As with the Pacific garbage patch, plastic can circulate in this part of the Atlantic Ocean for years, posing health risks to fish, seabirds, and other marine animals that accidentally eat the litter.
Full Article at National Geographic News
Article Credit: Richard A. Lovett for National Geographic News
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