The Trash in Our Oceans

Colleen Kaman ( Bio  /   Posts )  |  Tuesday, April 20, 2010 UTC

Photographer Chris Jordan specializes in large-scale works that depict the magnitude of our consumerism and its impact on our environment. [To get a sense of the magnitude of the trash produced by discarded consumer goods that statistics alone can’t reveal, watch Chris’s PopTech 2007 presentation on his project, Running the Numbers.]

For the past several years, Chris has been photographing the “garden patch,” an estimated several million tons of plastic floating in the remote open ocean. Powerful ocean currents concentrate floating debris into subtropical gyres and, in the process, break it down into tiny pieces that are easily ingested by animals.

At PopTech 2009, Chris shared images from his recent trip to the remote Midway Islands, where he photographed the carcasses of ocean-dwelling birds who live near the Pacific garbage zone.

Relying on the data from thousands of drifter buoy monitoring our oceans as well as oceanic expeditions, researchers affiliated with Five Gyres have been mapping the extent of plastic pollution around the world. They recently discovered what has been long suspected, that more garbage patches exist in other oceans.

5 Gyres
Image courtesy of 5 Gyres.org

As with any number of critical environmental issues, addressing these challenges requires a commitment to reduce our consumption but also to visionary innovation. Recently, a group of Dutch architects have envisioned recycling the Pacific’s floating debris into a floating island.

What do you suggest might be done about the millions of tons of marine pollution?

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