Plastic Pollution Worksheet
- Plastic is usually found mostly in the Central North Pacific Ocean Gyre.
- This gyre is a huge current filled with plastic and trash.
- Plastic was found approximately 1200 miles within the gyre.
- Many things in the gyre were things such as toothbrushes, hard hats, and soles of shoes.
- There were also tiny pieces of plastic that are very harmful to many animals like turtles and fish.
- This massive gyre is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
- 90 percent of the things in the garbage patch are plastic.
- The way that plastic gets deep into the ocean is by currents. After it is moved on from the current, it goes into the gyre.
- Plastic does NOT biodegrade.
- It is very hard to retrieve plastic from these gyres because the sun makes it very brittle and it will break as soon as you pick it up.
- Once they get to be brittle, the plastic breaks up into even smaller pieces and it becomes even harder to retrieve those pieces of plastic.
Vocabulary:
Gyre: A major, slowly rotating mass of ocean water bounded by faster, circulating water currents.
Marine Debris: Any persistent material that is intentionally or unintentionally left abandoned in oceans.
Current: The flow of water in a specific direction.
Physical Oceanographer: Someone that studies the physical properties of the ocean such as currents and waves.
Marine Biologists: Someone that studies the flora and fauna of the oceans.
Statute Mile: A term used for a standard land-based mile, as opposed to a nautical ocean-based mile.