A trip to not-so-small Atlantic garbage patch off South Carolina

Flickr user kqedquest
Plastic bits commonly retrieved from the Atlantic patch.

There's been much talk in recent years of the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" where ocean current combine with copious amounts of manmade plastics to combine a massive garbage dump — well off the coast of the Eastern United State is a similar situation.

At center here are circular currents of the Sargasso Sea that encircle Bermuda and reach towards the South Carolina coast ensnaring much that enters it and creating a not-so-mini great garbage patch of the Atlantic.

Well The Post and Courier caught up with a pair of College of Charleston students, Daniel Hodge and Coti Phillips, about their recent research trip out to the sea and their own surprise at what they found. 

Read the paper's report here.

Also worth a read is a report by Wired from August of 2010 on the patch and some nice science mapping of the area's extents; read that here.

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