We've been talking about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch for a while now on our blog.  Well, guess what - turns out there is an unfortunate sister to the Pacific Patch floating in the Atlantic. 

Recently reports are showing up in major news forums about this "chunky soup" of plastic debris that is described as "hard to spot from the surface and spun together by a vortex of currents."  Essentially, this is the same epidemic that is plaguing the once (pre-industrial age) pristine oceans of our world.  This new garbage patch has been verified, researched, and documented over the last two years by by two groups of scientists who trawled the sea between scenic Bermuda and Portugal's mid-Atlantic Azores islands. 

It is reported that much of the plastic is almost invisible to, but ALL of it is harmful to marine life and you know what that means...food chain, people.  Fish either eat or die directly from this plastic poison.  Then we eat the fish...you can put the rest together.  And don't forget about all the marine life that just suffers from our trash being in their home. 

The research was executed by two different groups (and our hats are off to both of them.)  Anna Cummins and Marcus Eriksen, of Santa Monica, California, were one group that sailed across the Atlantic for their research project. They plan similar studies in the South Atlantic in November and the South Pacific  next spring. 

They presented their research in February at the 2010 Oceans Sciences Meeting in Portland, Oregon.

On the voyage from Bermuda to the Azores, they crossed the Sargasso Sea, an area bounded by ocean currents including the Gulf Stream. They took samples every 100 miles (160 kilometers) with one interruption caused by a major storm. Each time they pulled up the trawl, it was full of plastic.

A second study was conducted by undergraduates with the Woods Hole, Massachusetts-based Sea Education Association.  This group of students collected more than 6,000 samples on trips between Canada and the Caribbean over two decades. The lead investigator, Kara Lavendar Law, said they found the highest concentrations of plastics between 22 and 38 degrees north latitude, an offshore patch equivalent to the area between roughly Cuba and Washington, D.C

Remember, think about what you're buying - is it wasteful packaging?  You don't have to buy it - you can get reusable water bottles and reusable shopping bags for cheap and not just for yourselves, but as simple gifts for family and friends. 

*A lot of the information in this article was fueled by reading we did across a bunch of different resources.  We hyperlinked to longer articles at certain parts in order to give credit where credit is due.  We suggest if you want to read more in-depth, you just Google search for Great Atlantic Garbage Patch.