NiallOK’s Blog

Hi there! First time here? Feel free to subscribe to my RSS feed. If you like what you read, you can vote for me on IrishBlogs.info. Thanks for visiting!

I’m stunned, although I shouldn’t be. I’m shocked, although I should know better.

If you’re not going to read the rest of this post - at least read this: Avoid swimming in the north-central Pacific Ocean (also known as the North Pacific Gyre). I KNOW… it’ll be difficult… but please,… it’s for the best, honest!

Tonight, while watching a repeat of the quiz show QI (Quite Interesting), hosted by that brilliant bi-polar comic and intellectual genius, Mr. Stephen Fry, on the all-too-easy-to-remember Sky Digital channel 111 (Dave), I learned the shocking fact that an enormous area of the Pacific Ocean is filled (read “filled” as over 3 million pieces per square kilometre) with rubbish… trash… garbage… call it what you will… and most of it totally non-biodegradable plastics.

This … THING… is causing havoc with marine wildlife on a massive scale. Estimates put the size of this plastic mass at anywhere between ‘the size of Texas’ and ‘twice the size of the continental United States’. Let’s put that in perspective - it’s (I’m guesstimating here…) somewhere between 10 and 280 times bigger than the island of Ireland. Yowch.

Anyway, they call it the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (or the ‘Pacific Trash Vortex’ - and the word ‘vortex’ is kinda appropriate as it’s got a bit of a whirlpool … or, yes, "gyre"… thing going on there) and it’s a stunning phenomenon;- a testament to just how bad it’s gotten and how humankind as we know it are truly destroying the world.

Have a read of that Wikipedia page. I did, and I still find it difficult to digest (… as do the fish, plankton, etc. in the area, I understand…).

I guess I’m posting this because .. well, I think more people should know about it, basically!

By the way, yes - the title of this post comes from a song in an episode of the Simpsons.