Sargasso Sea is Atlantic Ocean trash heap

A floating island of plastic-laden trash has been detected off the coast of North Carolina in the Sargasso Sea region in the Northern Atlantic Ocean.

Named the “Atlantic Ocean Garbage Patch,” it poses health risks to animals, birds, other marine mammals and humans.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tells us that the Sargasso Sea is the only sea without a land boundary.

Interestingly, the Sargasso Sea is defined by ocean currents. The Gulf Stream establishes the Sargasso Sea’s western boundary, the North Atlantic Current is the northern boundary, the Canary Current lies to the east, and the southern boundary is the North Atlantic Equatorial Current. Hence, the Sargasso Sea’s borders are dynamic and reflect seasonal variations, NOAA reports.

Bermuda is the most identifiable prominent land mass within the Sargasso Sea region. About 61,000 people live on the island.

NOAA said: “The Sargasso Sea is named for a genus of seaweed called sargassum, which floats freely and reproduces by vegetative fragmentation on the high seas. Other seaweeds reproduce and begin life on the floor of the ocean.”

“Sargassum provides a home to an amazing variety of marine species. Turtles use sargassum mats as nurseries where hatchlings have food and shelter,” NOAA noted.

NOAA added: “The Sargasso Sea is a spawning site for threatened and endangered eels as well as white marlin, shark and dolphinfish. Humpback whales annually migrate through the Sargasso Sea. Commercial fish, such as tuna, and birds also migrate through the Sargasso Sea and depend on it for food.”

Unfortunately, the Sargasso Sea is one of the five garbage patches found around the world.

Scientifically, these areas are known as ocean gyres. A gyre is a large system of circular ocean currents formed by global wind patterns and forces created by Earth’s rotation.

The water circulates in a slow spiral. Winds are light and the currents tend to push any floating material into the low-energy center of the gyre. The sea garbage is in a state of never-ending rotation.

NOAA scientists refer to the gyre contents as “trash soup, a collection of pelagic plastic particles, consumer products and sludge. The plastic particles seen of the surface of the water form just a portion of what’s there, since plastic also gets pushed down below the surface.

“Since plastic doesn’t biodegrade, what is thrown into the ocean will always be there. Trillions of these plastics get trapped in the floating trash pile,” NOAA contends.

Toxic chemicals that do not dissolve in water are there, too, “absorbed by plastic just like a sponge.”

The Sargasso Sea is one of the areas that should be protected as an Ocean Sanctuary, according to Greenpeace, the international environmental organization, which is headquartered in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Additionally, the issue of ocean-dwelling plastics has caught the attention of The World Counts, a web-based project that originated in Copenhagen, Denmark. It seeks to “raise awareness of important global challenges and inspire consumer-driven action to reverse negative trends.”

The World Counts counters have identified the plastic garbage patches as negative trends, with far-reaching implications to the environment and to health.

The principals of World Counts – Esben Larsen, Karsten Bjerring Olsen and Victor Emanouilov – say: “Our current consumer society is not sustainable. Basically, products are made from natural resources and eventually turned into waste. With a limited amount of natural resources, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that we can’t run such a system forever.”

“We, as consumers, can make a positive difference by paying more attention to the things we buy,” they advise.