“The Garbage Patch is not a solid island …. Instead, it resembles a soupy mass, interspersed with large pieces of junk such as derelict fishing nets and waterlogged tires …. “

The so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a stewy body of plastic and marine debris that floats an estimated 1,000 miles west of San Francisco, is a shape-shifting mass far too large, delicate and remote to ever be cleaned up, according to a researcher who recently returned from the area.

But that might not stop the federal government from trying.

Charles Moore, the marine researcher at the Algalita Marina Research Foundation in Long Beach who has been studying and publicizing the patch for the past 10 years, said the debris - which he estimates weighs 3 million tons and covers an area twice the size of Texas - is made up mostly of fine plastic chips and is impossible to skim out of the ocean.

“Any attempt to remove that much plastic from the oceans - it boggles the mind,” Moore said from Hawaii, where his crew is docked. “There’s just too much, and the ocean is just too big.”

The trash collects in one area, known as the North Pacific Gyre, due to a clockwise trade wind that circulates along the Pacific Rim. It accumulates the same way bubbles gather at the center of hot tub, Moore said.

- Justin Berton, San Francisco Chronicle: October 30, 2007: link.

Trashed: Across the Pacific Ocean, Plastics, Plastics, Everywhere

I often struggle to find words that will communicate the vastness of the Pacific Ocean to people who have never been to sea. Day after day, Alguita was the only vehicle on a highway without landmarks, stretching from horizon to horizon. Yet as I gazed from the deck at the surface of what ought to have been a pristine ocean, I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic.

It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments. Months later, after I discussed what I had seen with the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, perhaps the world’s leading expert on flotsam, he began referring to the area as the “eastern garbage patch.” But “patch” doesn’t begin to convey the reality. Ebbesmeyer has estimated that the area, nearly covered with floating plastic debris, is roughly the size of Texas.

- Charles Moore, Natural History v.112, n.9, Nov03: link.

Sargasso Sea: this is a region of the North Atlantic with low winds, surrounded by currents which tend to accumulate matter in the center.

[There is] sometimes total lack of wind over the sea, and the possibility for modern engines to become entangled in the sargassum, stranding most vessels. Thus, it is sometimes called the “graveyard of ships.”

- Wikipedia: link.

Flotsam and Jetsam: the Sargasso Sea is the setting for “Mystery of the Lizard Men“, the pilot episode of Jonny Quest.

Observations by Morrow Mayo on the city of Los Angeles

Los Angeles, it should be understood, is not a mere city. On the
contrary, it is, and has been since 1888, a commodity; something to be
advertised and sold to the people of the United States like
automobiles, cigarettes and mouth wash.

- Morrow Mayo: Link.

And:

Here is an artificial city which has been pumped up under forced
draught, inflated like a balloon, stuffed with rural humanity like a
goose with corn…endeavoring to eat up this too rapid avalanche of
anthropoids, the sunshine metropolis heaves and strains, sweats and
becomes pop-eyed, like a young boa constrictor trying to swallow a
goat. It has never imparted an urban character to its incoming
population for the simple reason that it has never had any character to
impart. On the other hand, the place has the manners, culture and
general outlook of a huge country village.

- Morrow Mayo: Link.

Los Angeles by Morrow Mayo @ Amazon.com: link.

1933 Gonzo History

In his prescient 1933 gonzo history, Los Angeles, Morrow Mayo traced L.A.’s birth back to cleared sagebrush and wild mustard, a barren swatch of acreage “that resembled a sort of glorified unoccupied tennis-court in the desert, surrounded by empty polo-fields.”

- Josh Kun, “L.A. Boogie”: Link.

The Owens Valley Aqueduct

In W. A. Chalfant’s book, The Story of Inyo, Morrow Mayo (a Los Angeles reporter) wrote: “Los Angeles gets its water by reason of one of the costliest, crookedest, most unscrupulous deals ever perpetrated, plus one of the greatest pieces of engineering folly ever heard of. Owens Valley is there for anybody to see. The city of Los Angeles moved through this valley like a devastating plague. It was ruthless, stupid, cruel and crooked. It stole the waters of the Owens River. It drove the people of Owens Valley from their home, a home which they had built from the desert. For no sound reason, for no sane reason, it destroyed a helpless agricultural section and a dozen towns. It was an obscene enterprise from the beginning to end.”

- Owens Valley Herald: link.

See also California water wars.

Morrow Mayo’s influence on others

When asked to name the writer on Southern California who had the greatest
influence in shaping my values, I pass over the more prominent names: John
Caughey, Carey McWilliams, Kevin Starr and others. I grew up in the pre-WWII
Southland, and my literary hero was the latter-day muckraker, Morrow Mayo. I
was thirteen when I read his powerful environmental essay, “To See it Fall,” a
now forgotten plea for preservation of the giant Sequoias. Shortly after that
I read his critical volume “Los Angeles,” and I became forever a critic of the
city’s destruction of Owens Valley.

- Ralph E. Shaffen, An Open Letter to “Environmentalist” Mary Nichols and Times Publisher Jeffrey Johnson: link.

Geological evidence supports theory of surge down the English Channel.

The island that is now England, Scotland and Wales was severed from continental Europe by a cataclysmic flood during the last ice age, according to a group of researchers based in Britain.

The team, led by Sanjeev Gupta, a geologist at Imperial College London, have found strong evidence at the bottom of the English Channel for a ’super-flood’ theory first suggested more than 20 years ago.
(more…)

Water. We all need it. We must share it. We are water; water is us; what we do to water, we do to ourselves.

We plan our cities near water; we bathe in water; we play in water; we work with water. Our economies are built on the strength of water transportation - and the products we buy and sell are all partly water, in one way or another. Our daily lives are built on water, and shaped by it. Without the water that surrounds us - the humidity of the air, the roughness of the river’s current, the flow from the kitchen tap - our lives would be impossible.

In recent decades, water has fallen in our esteem. No longer an element to be revered and protected, it is a consumer product that we have shamefully neglected. Eighty percent of our bodies are formed of water, and two thirds of the planet’s surface is covered by water: water is our culture, our life.

The theme ‘Water and Culture’ of WWD 2006 draws attention to the fact that there are as many ways of viewing, using, and celebrating water as there are cultural traditions across the world. Sacred, water is at the heart of many religions and is used in different rites and ceremonies. Fascinating and ephemeral, water has been represented in art for centuries - in music, painting, writing, cinema - and it is an essential factor in many scientific endeavours as well.

Each region of the world has a different way of holding water sacred, but each recognizes its value, and its central place in human lives. Cultural traditions, indigenous practices, and societal values determine how people perceive and manage water in the world’s different regions.

Link
See also:
Water Partners International - link
WaterAid - link
Wikipedia - link
World Water Council - link