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- pollution being one of the largest issues caused by the garbage patch is what is destroying the ocean and all the animals within it.

- people that dump trash or any substance that can be harmful to ocean life don't realize how harmful it can be to the creatures

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Our first solution to our issues are turning the recycled ocean plastic into yarn, and then clothes. (Idea from music producer and songwriter Pharrell Williams)
But the downside of this is the garbage is spread over millions of square miles, and most of it is tiny bits that cannot be restored.

Pros- people would buy the clothes because it was created by a well known person.

Cons- The plastic keeps becoming into smaller pieces so it would difficult

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Tony Haymet, former director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has heard hundreds of ocean cleanup plans. Late at night, over many beers, he's come up with a few dozen of his own. None of them, he says, has seemed likely to work.

That includes this spring's offerings. A Dutch engineering student, Boyan Slat, envisions a contraption with massive booms that would sweep debris into a huge funnel. Songwriter and music producer Pharrell Williams wants to fund the monumental cost of any cleanup by turning recycled ocean plastic into yarn and then clothes.

The challenge is huge. For one thing, the garbage is spread over millions of square miles. For another, it's made up mostly of degraded plastic, broken down by sunlight and waves into tiny bits the size of grains of rice.

"That's what makes it so horrifying," Haymet says. "The micro-plastic is the same size as the stuff living in the water column. How would we ever go out and collect it? So far no one's come up with a plan to separate all the micro-plastic from the living life that's the same size."

In the face of growing criticism, Slat had to back off his optimistic boast that he could clean up the oceans in five years. He posted a notice on his website asking the media and the critics to wait until he finishes his research.

Meanwhile, the garbage keeps growing.

Consider this alarming statistic from CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, which is wrapping up a three-year study of marine debris: Every decade global production of plastics doubles. Even if someone came up with a workable collecting mechanism, how much impact could it have?

"If we are doubling what we are putting into the ocean on a ten-year basis, there's no way to keep up," says Chris Wilcox, an ecologist at CSIRO. "It would be as if you were vacuuming your living room, and I'm standing at the doorway with a bag of dust and a fan. You can constantly keep vacuuming, but you could never catch up."

The Garbage Patches

Most of the garbage accumulates in five little-explored "patches" found in the doldrums of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

The largest is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which starts a few hundred miles off the coast of North America and stretches to a few hundred miles off the coast of Japan; a more concentrated area lies between California and Hawaii.

One commonly accepted estimate is that the high-density area inside the Great Pacific Garbage Patch contains 480,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer (nearly four-tenths of a square mile). But scientists say that's only a guess.

Charles Moore, who "discovered" the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in the late 1990s and plans a research trip there in July, estimates that altogether the globe's garbage patches contain 200 million tons of floating debris. He came up with the figure based on calculations that 2.5 percent of the world's plastic ends up in the sea.

Marcus Eriksen, a marine scientist and co-founder of the California-based 5 Gyres, which studies the five main garbage patches, estimates the total floating debris is just 500,000 tons.

In either case, the harm to fish and other sea creatures is increasing. A 2009 research trip to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch by Scripps found 9 percent of the fish had ingested plastic. Eriksen, with help from seven other scientists, recently analysed material in all of the garbage patches. Of 671 fish collected, 35 percent had ingested plastic particles.

"Either number scares me," Haymet says. "Those are only the sick fish-not the ones who died because they ate plastic that was too big. And they are the only two studies. There should be hundreds of studies of this stuff. Our life, our economies are totally dependent on the oceans. Fifty percent of the oxygen we breathe is made in the ocean every night."

Addressing the Problem

Haymet and like-minded ocean scientists haven't given up. They favor a low-tech, more practical approach to protecting the oceans from trash: Persuade the world's people to stop littering.

Only about 20 percent of ocean plastic comes from marine sources, such as discarded fishing equipment or cargo ship mishaps. About 80 percent of it washes out to sea from beach litter or was carried downstream in rivers, according to the CSIRO study, which is considered the most comprehensive.

About half of that litter is plastic bottles. Most of the rest is packaging.

"All of that stuff was in a human's hand at one point or another," Wilcox says. "The essence of the solution is to provide incentives for people not to throw this stuff away. It is the cheapest, simplest, and far most efficient solution to the problem."

Creating incentives to help reduce littering can be a political challenge. Only one of Australia's eight main states and territories has a beverage-container deposit law, says Britta Denise Hardesty, who conducted the CSIRO study.

In the U.S. only ten states-including California, Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut-have enacted container deposit laws. Opinion polls show support for such laws, but beverage manufacturers have opposed legislation. They argue that bottle deposits are more expensive than other forms of recycling and that requiring deposits constitutes a tax, which increases the cost of beverages.

"When you think about climate change, it's hard to reduce our carbon footprint, because we have to go through a fundamental shift in our economies," Wilcox says. "With plastic, when you're throwing a bottle cap on the ground, that should be an easy impact to get rid of."

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Tony Haymet, former director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has heard hundreds of ocean cleanup plans. Late at night, over many beers, he's come up with a few dozen of his own. None of them, he says, has seemed likely to work. That includes this spring's offerings.

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Another solution to our issue is a group of people made the Sea Change campaign where, they help get most of the fishing gear , nets or anything that will get the sea animals tangled or lead them to getting harmed in any way.The campaign also helps the animals that were hurt, and takes it to repair what is needed to fix on their body .

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Sea Change campaign: tackling ghost fishing gear

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Our Sea Change campaign reduces the huge suffering caused by 'ghost gear' - abandoned fishing gear that turns oceans into death traps for sea animals The ghost

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Pros -  Saving as much animals you can

Cons-
1. the only way the animals are getting help is because of the funding's.
2. not gonna be able to collect all the fishing gear/nets since the oceans to large, so it will still be difficult for the animals that still aren't being saved.or helped. Itwill not change the numbers on the decreasing of lost lives of the sea animals .

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A solution created by a teenage boy named Boyan Slat has helped  by removing 50% of the plastic, his  creation is called "The ocean Cleanup ", he asked himself this question when creating this project, "Why move through the ocean, if the ocean can move through you?".

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Marine plastic pollution is one of the greatest issues facing our oceans. The world's biggest accumulation of this trash can be found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California and The Ocean Cleanup has developed the first feasible technology to remove 50 percent of it over 10 years.

The Ocean Cleanup was founded by Dutchman, Boyan Slat, who invented a method aimed at cleaning up this area in the Pacific. A task previously considered to be impossible. Boyan devised this method by asking the question, "Why move through the ocean, if the ocean can move through you?"

A 100km clean up array, deployed for 10 years, will passively remove up to half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Instead of going after the plastic using boats and nets, The Ocean Cleanup will deploy long floating barriers, using the natural movement of the ocean currents to passively concentrate the plastic itself. It works as practically all of the current will flow underneath the barriers preventing any by-catch of sea-life, whilst the lighter-than-water plastic objects will be collected in front of the floating barriers.

Concepts are indicating that a 100 km clean up array, deployed for 10 years, will passively remove up to half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But an important question remains: half of what? This is where the Mega Expedition comes in. This project aims to create a high resolution map of the plastic in the Pacific Ocean to provide an up to date estimation of its plastic pollution levels.
The main goals of this project are to:
- Estimate the total amount of plastic in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
- Optimize the clean up technology
- Better determine the cost per kilogram of ocean plastic extracted

To do so the Mega Expedition plans to use up to 50 boats in parallel to cover the 3,500,000 km² patch from California to Hawaii and you can be a part of it.
Mega Expedition vessels will be involved in two types of activity when navigating within the Garbage Patch area:
- Visual surveys, where observers count and classify all debris they find at sea during 30-minutes observation periods, and log the data in a smart phone application
- Trawl surveys, where small surface nets are towed to collect plastic from the sea surface.

Each vessel will attempt to follow a unique route when navigating within the Garbage Patch area and at least one person per vessel will be trained to participate in this project as "Citizen Scientists". They will be responsible for collecting high-quality scientific data at sea. As well as citizen scientists, The Ocean Cleanup are of course looking for boat owners with vessels capable of making long distance cruises and capable skippers. They will also be looking for volunteer crew members and experienced captains and first mates to get involved on chartered yachts and sailing boats.
Why should I join?
- Your contribution will help rid the oceans of plastic
- You will get to visit the Great Pacific Garbage Patch yourself
- A significant part of the costs will be covered by The Ocean Cleanup
- Through its global coverage, your contribution will be internationally recognised
- The Ocean Cleanup takes care of all equipment, logistics and can arrange for a volunteer to do the measurements

The Mega Expedition plans to launch in August this year to commence the study which will gauge the true extent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

This system will span 2000 metres making it the longest floating structure ever. Currently The Ocean Cleanup are planning to deploy their first barrier next year off the coast of Tsushima, an island located in the waters between Japan and South-Korea. This system will span 2000 metres making it the longest floating structure ever and the plan is for it to be operational for two years. It will be an important milestone for the company who hope to continue increasing the scale of the barriers from there on and really get going on their mission to clean up our oceans.
The Ocean Cleanup are now actively looking for vessels and experienced sailors to make this a reality. If you would like to participate in the Mega Expedition or have any questions, get in touch at: megaexpedition@theoceancleanup.com and for more information visit their website HERE.

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The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Solution - Magicseaweed.com

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Marine plastic pollution is one of the greatest issues facing our oceans. The world's biggest accumulation of this trash can be found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California and The Ocean Cleanup has developed the first feasible technology to remove 50 percent of it over 10 years.