Search for Missing Malaysian Plane Proves How Much Trash Is in Our Oceans

Searchers scouring the waters of the Indian Ocean off Australia’s west coast have not yet succeeded in locating the missing Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200, but they have focused global attention on just how many pieces of manmade detritus is floating in our oceans.

Search personnel have referred to the trash, which ranges in size as small as a plastic water bottle to as large as a 70-foot long shipping container, with different descriptors, from garbage to the more unfamiliar and nautical term “flotsam.”

Although the search area is not located in the famous Great Pacific Ocean “garbage patch,” it is located at the edge of one of five “gyres” where ocean currents and the atmospheric circulation draws in waste like a magnet. Read more...