That's not classy, its trashy

Landfills have constantly been increasing in size and number over the last few decades as we as a species try to find a place to hide our massive amounts of waste from sight,  then from there out of mind. But after watching a part of a documentary called, How The Earth Made Us (BBC), I became aware of something I had never heard of before. A gyre, or a spiral/whirl can exist in many forms. You could have a gyre of wind, gyre of water, hell a gyre of geese! But what about a gyre of garbage, mostly composed of plastics and Styrofoam, swirling around in the middle of the Pacific Ocean? Yes, there actually exists an immense swirl of garbage that grows everyday and is currently the largest landfill (or waterfill?) in the world, more than tripling the state of Texas in size. Seventy percent of all the plastic falls to the ocean surface where it can damage the coastal floor ecosystem. This is extremely hazard for wildlife, which can also indirectly affect us. But where this garbage is primarily a growing concern is in the Midway Atoll. This area is roughly, as the name implies, half or midway between North America and Asia. The Albatross is an oceanic bird that lay and hatch its eggs on and around these islands. Once hatched, the mother searches far and wide looking for food, normally for squid or fly fish eggs. But what has been happening more often than not it seems is that, mistaking it for food, the albatross picks up numerous pieces of plastic ranging from bottle caps to checkers, and feed it to their young.  Plastic, as you may remember from being a child, doesn’t taste good, nor is it good or safe to ingest no matter what species you are.

 There are plenty of people in the world that do not see this as a problem, or more likely don’t even see it at all. Now the albatross isn’t the only living organism to suffer from this floating gyre of garbage, but lets imagine it is. 500,000 albatross eggs are hatched at Midway every year, with roughly 200,000 chicks that die. As i was saying, some people may down play this event as trivial. But looking at the big picture as opposed to looking at a small, narrow instant gratification scope, we can see that this has enormous potential consequences. The less albatross their are, then their is a less diverse food supply for those animals that feed on them. Conversely, if there are less albatross, then their primary food source will increase because of the decrease in predators. This can change the entire ecosystem with which the albatross is apart. Everything in this world is interconnected, you cannot change "x" without it having a direct affect on "y". The repercussions of this are to many and too detailed to explain in full in this blog, so I encourage my readers to look into the complete connectedness of the world’s ecosystems.  

Thinking about a very positive affect on humans, what if a tsunami were to occur right by this gyre? We would have a giant wave of our own garbage with the potential the impact thousands of people along the coast and deliver back to us our garbage. The physical affects on humans from this gyre are at this point minimal. But the affects on wildlife and the future affects it may have on us should be a growing concern. 

Sources: http://www.latimes.com/news/la-me-ocean2aug02,0,4917201.story
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/great-pacific-garbage-patch.htm