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By Raubi Marie, August 29, 2009

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is making headlines. Yesterday Yahoo.com posted an article published by the Associated Press describing the new research being performed on the massive, floating heap of garbage forming in Pacific Ocean.

Kudos to national news links creating awareness of this soon to be trash disaster, and thanks  to the University of California for going out and investigating the problem.

Revisit this soupy, trash island on RaubiMarie then read what AP had to say about it on Yahoo.

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By Raubi Marie, July 15, 2009

Hundreds of miles off the coast of California, a new continent is growing. Already the size of Texas, this mass continues to swell in size with each passing day. It is a floating heap that can’t be stopped, and it is entirely made of garbage.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was first discovered in 1997 by Charles Moore and his crew while sailing through an isolated area of ocean west of the California coast. During his cruise, Moore was shocked to find thousands of pieces of garbage floating near the surface of the water. He was so distraught by the amount of garbage he saw that he returned to dry land with a mission to spread the word about this ever-growing trash pile.

In the late 90’s, Moore began conducting research on the area better known as the North Pacific Gyre. An ocean gyre is a large scale swirling vortex of ocean current. Moore found that this current, circling the northern Pacific Ocean was attracting most of the world’s trash and collecting it in one giant heap — about 3.5 million tons of garbage to be exact. Continue reading 'The Creation of the Eighth Continent'»