Tag: oceancleanup

Fishing Industry Pinpointed as Common Culprit in Great Pacific Garbage Patch
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Fishing Industry Pinpointed as Common Culprit in Great Pacific Garbage Patch

A new study on the gigantic garbage patch floating in the North Pacific Ocean points to a major source of that trash: the fishing industry. To date the trash pile, also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, has accumulated some 80,000 tons of plastic waste and that estimate continues to climb, according to an article in Popular Science, which sites the study by six researchers from the Netherlands published in Scientific Reports. Most of that litter in the ocean is delivered by way of rivers that carry waste and human pollution from land to sea, but the origin of floating debris in offshore areas is not fully understood. An analysis of the garbage by the nonprofit project Ocean Cleanup found that 75-86% of the floating plastics come from offshore fishing and aquaculture ac...