How many gyres are there where are they

Several years earlier Marcus Eriksen, the Research Director and co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute a nonprofit organization focused on tackling the worldwide issue of plastic pollution had passed through the area and seen some plastic pollution. In the Southern Hemisphere the Indian Ocean appears to have a greater particle count and weight than the South Atlantic and South Pacific oceans combined.

In my study, there were many trawls when the amount of plastic, I could not have fit in the palm of my hand. In fact, some argue that patch is something of a misnomer, and that a phrase like soup would be a better fitting—if emotionally disturbing—image.

Unlike paper or cotton, plastic never actually breaks down, returning back to its chemical components so it can be reused in the biological processes that fuel life on Earth. Instead, plastic just breaks into smaller and smaller pieces. Instead of microscopic bits, there were pieces of debris he could actually see.

Moore used a device called a manta trawl. The net goes down about 20 cm nearly 8 inches below the surface and scoops up plankton, the tiny plants and animals that are a key food source to many animals such as whales and fish, along with whatever debris are large enough to get stuck. When they drag the trawls up, Moore and his colleagues sort out their catch. The swirling oceanic currents of Gyres make them a sort of oceanic desert.

In the Northern Hemisphere the gyres rotate to the right clockwise , while in the Southern Hemisphere the gyres rotate to the left counterclockwise. The Kuroshio flows into the North Pacific Current which moves east towards North America, where it becomes the California Current to complete the gyre.

Near Antarctica the circulation is somewhat different. Because there is little in the way of continental land masses between o south, the surface current created by the westerly winds can make its way completely around the Earth, creating the Antarctic Circumpolar Current ACC or West Wind Drift WWD that flows from west to east Figure 9.

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current is the only current that connects all of the major ocean basins, and in terms of the amount of water that it transports, it is the largest surface current on Earth. Above 60 o latitude the prevailing winds are the polar easterlies , which create a current flowing from east to west along the edge of the Antarctic continent, the East Wind Drift or the Antarctic Coastal Current.

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current creates the southern boundary for all of the Southern Hemisphere gyres. Not all of the equatorial water that is moved westward by the trade winds and reaches the continents gets transported to higher latitudes in the gyres, because the Coriolis Effect is weakest along the equator.

Instead, some of the water piles up along the western edge of the ocean, and then flows eastward due to gravity, creating narrow Equatorial Countercurrents between the North and South Equatorial Currents Figure 9. Some of this water also moves east as equatorial undercurrents that flow at depths between m, underneath the Equatorial Currents.

The ocean churns up various types of currents. Together, these larger and more permanent currents make up the systems of currents known as gyres. Wind, tides, and differences in temperature and salinity drive ocean currents. The ocean churns up different types of currents , such as eddies , whirlpools , or deep ocean currents.

Larger, sustained currents—the Gulf Stream , for example—go by proper names.