The mystery is why anyone would use the term "garbage patch". With the aid of my mad math skills Polifrog has calculated that it would take nearly 8.5 hours of "net-tow" to return an amount of plastic equal to the weight of a nickel.
The term "garbage patch" does not necessarily mean a visible island of trash floating on the waves, researchers said. Only 62 percent of net tows by ships have contained detectable amounts of plastic.
"What we're collecting are really small fragments of plastic from larger consumer items," Lavender Law explained. "If you're on the deck of a ship, you normally can't even see the plastic pieces."
Each half-hour net tow typically turned up just 20 plastic pieces equivalent to about 0.3 grams in all. By comparison, a U.S. nickel weighs 5 grams.
The vast majority of plastic pieces caught in the net turned out smaller than 10 millimeters, Lavendar Law said.
Alarmism!
out
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