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The Great Pacific Garbage Catch. Müll als Medium einer ‹Plastic Oceanography›
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This article examines how floating plastic debris in the ocean has become integrated into media-technological operations within oceanographic research, serving as both a data source for mapping ocean currents and a target for technological collection systems. It traces how plastics function as interference objects that reveal the interconnected circulation systems of global oceans and globalized waste production.
The article is dedicated to a three-fold media-becoming of garbage in oceanographic research. First, it deals with attempts to condense washed-up flotsam through media operations, such as searching, identifying, classifying, or networking it into data on ocean currents. Second, it investigates computer-assisted approaches to collect and recycle accumulated debris found in «garbage patches» by means of drifting barriers. Third, it examines the tracking of sensor-reinforced buoys used to follow the dispersion of marine debris. As an effect, the oceanic interference object plastic waste is included as an element of media-technological operations that make tangible the systemically interlocking circulation of global ocean currents and globalized waste production.
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Gyre Plastic: Science, Circulation and the Matter of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
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This dissertation examines how the Great Pacific Garbage Patch became a recognized environmental crisis, tracing how plastic circulates through ocean currents, laboratories, and public discourse. Using ethnographic methods and historical analysis, the author shows how diverse communities of scientists, activists, and media have constructed — and contested — knowledge about marine plastic pollution and its entanglement with marine life.
Floating plastic debris in the central and western Mediterranean sea : current status and its social perception
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This review summarizes the current state of knowledge on floating plastic debris in the central and western Mediterranean Sea, noting that while ocean gyres concentrate plastics, only about 1% of ocean-entering plastic is accounted for at the surface — suggesting vast hidden reservoirs of plastic pollution.
Distribution of floating inertial particles in the ocean by their density: formation and evolution of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
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Researchers modeled the density-dependent distribution of buoyant plastic debris in the ocean and traced the formation and evolution of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, showing how particle density governs whether plastics remain at the surface or sink, and explaining the spatial concentration patterns observed in open-ocean accumulation zones.
Persistency and Surface Convergence Evidenced by Two Maker Buoys in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
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Researchers tracked two drifting buoys released in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 2019 and compared their trajectories to circulation divergence fields, Lagrangian plastic dispersal models, and sea-level anomalies, demonstrating that persistent negative velocity divergence and elevated modelled plastic surface density coincide with surface convergence zones that concentrate floating debris.
What’s that Floating in my Soup? Characterisation and Handling of Floating Debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
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Researchers characterized floating debris collected from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, finding a heterogeneous mixture of plastic types, sizes, and degradation states alongside entangled marine organisms. This study provides data on the composition and handling challenges of ocean plastic accumulation zones to inform cleanup operations.
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When a large batch of papers lands in the Atlas, we read through it and send a short write-up of what stood out.