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News
- -04-17-14 The Reason We Can't Find a Downed Jet (Time.com)
"We can see countless millions of miles into the blackness of space, but a three-mile depth in the ocean is testing the very limits of our technology. Never mind finding a missing jet, we're incapable of establishing even the most basic facts about the ocean floor."
"The other issue affecting visibility is the sheer volume of junk in the ocean. Around 5.25 trillion particles of plastic trash presently billow around the planet, say experts, weighing half a million tons. There are five huge garbage patches in the world’s seas, where the swirling of currents makes the mostly plastic debris accumulate. The largest of these is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a gyre measuring an estimated 700,000 to 15 million sq km. This refuse gets ingested by plankton, fish, birds and larger marine mammals, imperiling our entire ecosystem."
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