"Waiter...There's A Fly In My Plastic Soup"

No one to blame for this but ourselves. Four fifths of the plastic detritus floating over 2.5 million square miles of ocean surface arrives there from land-based run off: from stormwater, in other words. Litter. Who thinks of littering this way? We should.

Plastic contamination in the world's oceans is worse than previously imagined and no amount of technology can clean it up, according to Charles Moore. The oceanographer returned February 23 from a five-week odyssey in the Pacific Ocean with samples showing 48 parts plastic for every part of plankton.

"We are damned to a future of pollution by plastic," said Moore, who has spent more than a decade investigating Pacific plastic pollution. "There's no evidence it will end in a millennium."... A plastic "graveyard" double the size of Texas swirls in the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii.

See also: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch: "Out of Sight, Out of Mind ...

Via::CNET, "No tech cure for oceans 'damned' by plastic", Image credits::Algalita Marine Research Foundation, various images of plastic residue from gyre samples

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• Can Our Actions Save Humankind? 5 Crucial Environmental Tipping Points That We Can Directly Impact
• Surfers, Move Over: Planet Mechanics Tap the Oceans For Energy

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