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Recently, while driving I turned to the NPR radio channel and there was an interesting report being given about trash accumulation. Now, we are not foreigners to trash accumulation on Earth but this topic did get my interest because it was about trash accumulation within the oceans. We all know that there is a lot of trash thrown on beaches, which finally makes its way into oceans but the interesting or alarming fact is that this trash accumulation, in the Pacific Ocean, had turned into a big pile, the size of the state of Texas.

This accumulation of trash, according to that NPR news, is located in the Pacific Ocean, and is titled as the Trash Vortex. This collection of trash in the Pacific has been going on for quite a while and was first spotted about twenty years ago. Most of this trash definitely is from land, possibly from beaches or sewers, and some of our sea travelling friends are generous enough to make their own contributions to it by throwing their trash into the ocean. These pieces of debris are then gathered together by slow moving oceanic currents which are traveling in a specific pattern and, as mentioned earlier, it has become so huge that now that pile of trash is almost equal to the size of the state of Texas. The most dangerous aspect of this collection is that the trash in it is mostly made of plastic. When these plastic pieces are further broken down by sunlight and wave action, they are mistaken as food by sea birds and other marine animals. To only think, what harm, ingesting this ocean trash effects on marine animals and sea birds. If these pieces of trash are swallowed by marine animals, they can lead to starvation by blocking the digestive tracks. Sharp objects, like metal or glass, can perforate the stomach and cause internal bleeding, once ingested. According to the NPR report, many seabirds and their chicks have been found dead, their stomachs filled with medium sized plastic items such as bottle tops. Another...