Every year more than 25 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean. This plastic slowly collects, drawn together by tidal currents into gyres.
Our oceans contain five major gyres, or large, slow rotating whirlpools created by ocean currents, wind, and the Earth’s rotation, where plastic trash circulating in the ocean accumulates to form extensive patches covering a total area equivalent to 20 times the size of Great Britain. Sometimes referred to as ‘garbage patches,’ the easiest way to visualize this phenomenon is to imagine a big soup of marine debris floating on the ocean’s surface, the water circulating like a vortex to hold the trash at its center. Most of this plastic eventually breaks down into small particles no bigger than a few millimeters, but does not biodegrade, landing…
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Kayak Session (Digital) - 1 Issue, SUP World Magazine 2017