Second Oceanic Plastic Bag Island Discovered

I’ve written about the huge Pacific plastic garbage island twice the size of Texas. Now, as reported in an April 15th, 2010 AP article, researchers have discovered an Atlantic island of waste plastic, most of which comes from land. Researchers are warning that this new blight on the ocean stretches over thousands of square miles between Bermuda and Portugal's Azores islands.

The debris is harmful for fish and sea mammals. There is no real way to clean the oceans, so we have to do what we can by keeping disposable plastics out of circulation. It’s a global problem — it unfortunately is not confined to a single patch," Cummins said. Still more data are needed to assess the dimensions of the North Atlantic patch.

“Charles Moore, an ocean researcher credited with discovering the Pacific garbage patch in 1997, said the Atlantic undoubtedly has comparable amounts of plastic. The east coast of the United States has more people and more rivers to funnel garbage into the sea. But since the Atlantic is stormier, debris there likely is more diffuse, he said."Humanity's plastic footprint is probably more dangerous than its carbon footprint," he said.

A paper cited by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says as many as 100,000 marine mammals could die trash-related deaths each year.