Information is popular on the Internet that there is an entire island (in other sources - continent) from plastic bottles and other garbage on the surface of the Pacific Ocean, which is even visible from the cosmos. We checked whether this is really so.

The object in question is known as a large Pacific garbage spot. Its existence in 1988 predicted Scientists who worked in Alaska. And in 1997, the American yachtsman Charles Moore, who returned from Hawaii in California on a catamaran, discovered a giant zone on his way, which consisted of various waste of human activity. According to his calculations, we could talk about 3 million tons of garbage and territory the size of Texas. At first, mostly plastic bottles, covers from them and a variety of wrappers came across him, but a year later Moore found items such as a volleyball ball, an electron-ray tube for a 19-inch TV and even a truck tire. At the same time, garbage did not leave the limits of a giant spiral formed by Pacific currents. The further estimates that can be found in the press are already said about the territory in two Texas.

The problem interested experts from around the world, research began, press releases, science-science projects followed, and gradually the public had the impression that a Pacific garbage spot was a homogeneous plastic mass. The case of 2015 is very characteristic in this sense, when on a Facebook page called Ripley's BelievE it or not! ("Do you want to believe, you want not from Ripley") was published photo A small vessel, as if stuck in the sea of wood and plastic objects. The signature for the picture read: "The large Pacific garbage spot occupies 8.1% of the Pacific Ocean - the territory is twice as large as the continental part of the United States."

First, we note that this photograph was Made Back in 2011, off the coast of the Japanese village of Vakuya, which, among others, suffered from a destructive earthquake that had carried away almost 16,000 lives.

The situation captured in the photo could not be a fragment of the spots of interest to us not so much because of the prevalence of plastic (not wood) in the ocean, but due to the fact that in fact a large Pacific spot in the 21st century is practically not consisted of entire objects. It is millions, trillions of tiny pieces of plastic, called microplasty. Microplastics can not always be seen with the naked eye even from the surface of the water, not to mention satellite images, which often mentioned (but never demonstrated) in the media. This peculiar “soup” also contains the remains of fishing gear and shoes. At the same time, oceanographers and ecologists have recently found that about 70% of sea garbage sooner or later falls to the bottom of the ocean. Another problem lies in this - due to small sizes, sea animals take these bright pieces for food. Now on average each square kilometer of the seabed is 70 kg of plastic.

As for the size of the spot, the 2011 study conducted by Oregon University showed that the real size of a large Pacific garbage spot is hundreds of times less than usually affirmed. “There is no doubt that the amount of plastic in the oceans is concerned, but such an exaggeration undermines confidence in scientists,” speaks One of the researchers, Angel White. - “We have data to make reasonable assessments. We do not need exaggeration. Given the observed concentration of plastic in the northern part of the Pacific, it is incorrect to say that he outweighs plankton or that we observe the exponential growth of the amount of plastic. ”

We add that huge garbage spots in the oceans are most likely more than one, like giant whirlpools formed by currents. Scientists, of course, beat the alarm, and they should listen to them. However, multi -kilometer layers of bottles on the surface of the water, as well as the appearance of a trash from satellites, are myths.