184 Sentences With "gyres" | Random Sentence Generator

Large, semi-permanent currents in the ocean create massive swirling gyres.

Whales and ships and birds circling over floating gyres of garbage.

A twisted blue fishing net brings to mind ocean gyres of trash.

Without these ocean gyres to moderate temperatures, the Earth would be uninhabitable.

Mid-ocean gyres are fortunately neither especially rich in fauna nor particularly biodiverse.

"The gyres are 40% of the world ocean -- one third of the planet," says Moore.

"We all depend on the ocean for health," Anna Cummings, 5 Gyres executive director, said.

Gyres that trap trash are huge and there are about two massive ones in every ocean.

Designers and engineers have proposed marine drones and waterborne kites, even huge artificial drains for the gyres.

Plastic debris in the ocean was thought to accumulate in big patches, mostly in subtropical gyres — big currents that converge in the middle of the ocean — but scientists estimate that only about 1 percent of plastic pollution is in these gyres and other surface waters in the open ocean.

Immense gyres of trash rotate slowly in the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, North Pacific, South Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

Or it washes up on beaches around the world or collects in ocean gyres that become massive floating dumps.

The 5 Gyres Institute combines science, art, education, and outdoor adventure opportunities to fight plastics pollution in the world's oceans.

Gyre is a massive circular currents in the ocean and scientists say there are five major gyres in the world.

Islands like Inaccessible that are located near these gyres (and their resulting garbage patches) accumulate exorbitant amounts of plastic debris.

Chris Christie jiggles and wobbles like Humpty-Dumpty on TV and Chuck D bellows over monstrous gyres of guitar riffs.

"There's a paucity of data," says Marcus Eriksen, cofounder of the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit focused on ending plastic pollution.

Drifting with the currents, this refuse slowly collects in one of our ocean's five gyres, spiraling below the surface, nearly invisible.

However, I am assuredly not proposing that we call the trash gyres artworks, or place them within an art-historical context.

It has designed a system to trawl for plastic in the vast mid-ocean gyres where currents funnel all manner of flotsam.

The majority of garbage put into the ocean ends up beyond national boundaries, in the infamous swirling "garbage patches" in oceanic gyres.

Ocean currents will often create gyres that draw huge concentrations of microplastics into massive "garbage patches" in the middle of the ocean.

"One of the challenges is demonstrating there actually is harm from microfibers," says Marcus Eriksen, research director of the 5 Gyres Institute.

Countless nonprofits and NGOs, including Plastic Pollution Coalition and 5 Gyres, are working across borders to reduce plastic use on a global scale.

The closer we can move from the gyres to the source to solve plastic pollution, the better off our future oceans will be.

The one arguably death-defying act is the Wheel of Wonder, in which two brothers maneuver 30 to 40 feet up on twin gyres.

Garbage patches are formed by rotating ocean currents called "gyres" that pull marine debris into one location, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

A lot of this plastic collects in "garbage patches" that form as waste and debris get pushed together by circular ocean currents known as gyres.

When, graduating up in a spiral line of still expanding and ascending gyres, it pushes toward the intense significance of all things, hungry for the infinite?

"Driftloaf Totem (Red & White)" (2017) includes pieces of foam that suggest the formless gyres of detritus floating around in our oceans — but the sculpture also includes bread.

"By focusing on the middle of the ocean, you're missing the boat," says Marcus Eriksen, the co-founder and research director at the nonprofit The 5 Gyres Institute.

Plastic is pulled together in the powerful, circling currents of gyres, but it is also found in Arctic ice, washing up on remote islands, and infesting tourist destinations.

It starts with the obvious, visible damage, like the Great Pacific Garbage Dump and other ocean gyres where currents collect plastic waste into vast, dense, disgusting floating landfills.

Water samples collected from these regions show elevated concentrations of plastic particles, and the evidence that the oceanic gyres are becoming marine debris hot spots continues to grow.

The data his organization collects is shared with ocean nonprofit 5 Gyres Institute, which will create an online ocean model quantifying pollution in the Pacific and other plastic hotspots.

Even by The Ocean Cleanup's own calculations, the far-offshore gyres it had been trying to tidy up with its big tube hold a tiny fraction of ocean plastics: Perhaps .

In 212, at age 215, he gave a TedX talk outlining a tantalizing way to filter plastic waste out of the oceans' gyres, vortices where sea-junk tends to accumulate.

And it's taking a serious toll: There are more than 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic in the sea today, according to 5 Gyres, a nonprofit organization working to fight pollution.

The San Francisco Estuary Institute teamed up with the 5 Gyres Institute to complete a three-year study in what they claim is the first comprehensive regional study of microplastic pollution.

Ocean garbage patches are formed by rotating ocean currents called "gyres" that pull marine debris (litter, fishing gear, and plastic) into one location, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

"We can look at these types of fragments and try to tie them to the breakdown of these plastic items," said Carolynn Box, of the 5 Gyres Institute, during the summit.

Most debris ends up in the five big subtropical ocean gyres located in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans, which rotate clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern.

"Trying to clean up the oceans gyres is the most carbon heavy, expensive, and least efficient way to get rid of the issue," ocean researcher Britta Denise Hardesty said in an interview.

This mix of plastic types is roughly consistent with the kinds of plastic that collect in the subtropical gyres, though those parts of the ocean amasses a higher concentration of fishing line.

Liquid Death also donates 5 cents for every can sold to nonprofits like 5 Gyres (which fights plastic pollution) and Thirst Project (which works on providing access to clean drinking water around the world).

"I would argue almost any weekend of beach cleanup could probably capture more trash than they've collected in their six, seven years in business," says Marcus Eriksen, who studies ocean plastic and directs the 5 Gyres Institute.

Yesterday at a summit in Berkeley on the east shore of the Bay, the San Francisco Estuary Institute and the 5 Gyres Institute presented findings from a three-year survey of microplastics in Silicon Valley's massive watershed.

But while individuals fret over images of oceanic garbage gyres, the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries are pouring billions of dollars into new plants intended to make millions more tons of plastic than they now pump out.

I've been helping them out a bit modeling ocean currents to optimize the new trash booms they're deploying in the plastic gyres, but I'd rather be out in space, keeping an eye on the rest of the planet.

The confounding bit is that scientists know little about where all that plastic is ending up—in gyres like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, yes, but that's just a fraction of the debris released into the ocean each year.

But a problem with this study, at least for Marcus Eriksen, who studies ocean plastic and directs the 5 Gyres Institute, is that the observations are based on only 50 pieces of plastic that could be dated as old.

These plastics are continuously swept up into rotating currents into what scientists call convergent or accumulation zones where they settle into gyres or "garbage patches" and wreak havoc on ecosystems in every ocean in the world — sometimes in multiple places.

Also, since the trash in gyres can come from anywhere in the world, whatever organism that's made itself at home on the surface of the trash can be introduced as a non-native species to whatever environment it's deposited in.

A "meat map" of livestock pasturelands highlights how this farming involves deforestation and expels major anthropogenic methane, while a "health of waters" map examines freshwater quality, the accumulation of garbage gyres in the ocean (patches of floating trash), and marine dead zones.

Over a period of six years (2100 to 2100), Eriksen and a team of researchers went on 24 nautical expeditions across all five of the sea's major gyres (systems of circular ocean currents caused by wind patterns and the rotation of the Earth).

Though Inaccessible is indeed remote, being near the South Atlantic's midpoint, the nature of oceanic circulation means that this is exactly the sort of place where floating rubbish tends to accumulate—at the centre of whirlpools thousands of kilometres across, called gyres.

Just out of school, he presented his ambitious idea to filter the open ocean in 22.5: Instead of sending out boats to go after the trash, he argued, why not take advantage of the forces provided by the rotating currents of the gyres?

In their book Flotsametrics (2009), Curtis Ebbesmeyer and Eric Scigliano claim that so-called "bottle papers" were first deployed by Navy Admiral Alexander Becher in an effort to understand the directionality of gyres — the six circulating current systems in the middle of our oceans.

"Most of the oceans now contain some amount of microplastics," Marcus Eriksen, co-founder and Research Director of the 5 Gyres Institute, a nonprofit group "that empowers action against the global health crisis of plastic pollution through science, art, education, and adventure," told me.

The plastic pile-up not only illustrates the need for better waste management — it also shows why we should reduce the amount of plastic packaging throughout our supply chain, said Marcus Eriksen, co-founder of the 5 Gyres Institute, an organization dedicated to reducing plastic pollution.

And yet, these world-historical transformations aren't looking so good anymore: Growing plastic gyres float on the earth's oceans choking marine life, and a landscape marred by pollution, deforestation and climate change leaves us with scarcely enough arable land to feed the population at the rate it's growing.

After months of meteorological research, Yang produced a new work for the Bass show: "Coordinates of Speculative Solidarity," a chaotic floor-to-ceiling digital collage swirling with storm-tracking symbols, satellite photos of Floridian McMansions, distorted palm trees and sinister gyres that covers vast swathes of the museum like dystopian wallpaper.

There are four other ocean gyres in the world, but scientists believe that the one in the North Pacific contains the most trash—nearly two trillion pieces of plastic, weighing nearly eighty thousand metric tons, according to a study that scientists working with the Ocean Cleanup published in the online journal Scientific Reports last March.

The Ross Gyre and Weddell Gyre are two gyres that exist within the Southern Ocean. The gyres are located in the Ross Sea and Weddell Sea respectively, and both rotate clockwise. The gyres are formed by interactions between the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Antarctic Continental Shelf. Sea ice has been noted to persist in the central area of the Ross Gyre. p. 10.

Nonetheless, some diffusive upwelling does probably occur. Location of the Southern Ocean gyres.

On the Indian Ocean leg of their trip, they travelled between Perth, Australia, and Port Louis, Mauritius (east of Madagascar); each of the water samples they collected in the between contained plastic. They found that the South Atlantic, South Pacific, and Indian Ocean gyres were affected in the same way as the North Pacific and North Atlantic gyres. Anna Cummins, cofounder of 5 Gyres Institute called the pollution they found "a thin plastic soup".

Wind Driven Surface Currents: Gyres Subpolar circulation in the southern hemisphere is dominated by the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, due to the lack of large landmasses breaking up the Southern Ocean. There are minor gyres in the Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea, the Weddell Gyre and Ross Gyre, which circulate in a clockwise direction.

When water moves in this way, other water flows in to fill the gap and a circular movement of surface currents known as a gyre is formed. There are five main gyres in the world's oceans: two in the Pacific, two in the Atlantic and one in the Indian Ocean. Other smaller gyres are found in lesser seas and a single gyre flows around Antarctica. These gyres have followed the same routes for millennia, guided by the topography of the land, the wind direction and the Coriolis effect.

In the northern hemisphere the land masses prevent this and the ocean circulation is broken into smaller gyres in the Atlantic and Pacific basins.

Wide triangular journeys such as these may be important because forage fish, when feeding, cannot distinguish their own offspring. Fertile feeding grounds for forage fish are provided by ocean upwellings. Oceanic gyres are large-scale ocean currents caused by the Coriolis effect. Wind-driven surface currents interact with these gyres and the underwater topography, such as seamounts and the edge of continental shelves, to produce downwellings and upwellings.

This avoids bycatch, while collecting even the smallest particles. According to Slat's calculations, a gyre could be cleaned up in five years' time, amounting to at least 7.25 million tons of plastic across all gyres. He also advocated "radical plastic pollution prevention methods" to prevent gyres from reforming. In 2015, The Ocean Cleanup project was a category winner in the Design Museum's 2015 Designs of the Year awards. A fleet of 30 vessels, including a 32-metre (105-foot) mothership, took part in a month-long voyage to determine how much plastic is present using trawls and aerial surveys. The 2012 Algalita/5 Gyres Asia Pacific Expedition began in the Marshall Islands on 1 May, investigated the patch, collecting samples for the 5 Gyres Institute, Algalita Marine Research Foundation, and several other institutions, including NOAA, Scripps, IPRC and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. In 2012, the Sea Education Association (SEA) conducted research expeditions in the gyre. One hundred and eighteen net tows were conducted and nearly 70,000 pieces of plastic were counted.

The model predicted the five main ocean gyres (pictured), with rapid, narrow currents in the west flowing towards the poles and broader, slower currents in the east flowing away from the poles. Munk coined the term "ocean gyres," a term now widely used. The currents predicted for the western boundaries (e.g., for the Gulf Stream and the Kuroshio Current) were about half of the accepted values at the time, but those only considered the most intense flow and neglected a large return flow.

The existence of the Great Pacific garbage patch, the first to be discovered, was predicted in a 1988 paper published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States. The prediction was based on results obtained by several Alaska-based researchers between 1985 and 1988 that measured neustonic plastic in the North Pacific Ocean. Research studying trash washed onto beaches in and around the Indian Ocean suggested that there would be plastics found in the water column in the Indian Ocean as well. In 2010, the 5 Gyres Project set off on the first of its planned series of transoceanic voyages to determine whether the South Atlantic, South Pacific, and Indian Ocean gyres were affected in the same way as the North Pacific and North Atlantic gyres.

Like other subtropical gyres, it has a high-pressure zone in its center. Circulation around the center is clockwise around this high-pressure zone. Subtropical gyres make up 40% of the Earth’s surface and play critical roles in carbon fixation and nutrient cycling.Poretsky, 2009 This particular gyre covers most of the Pacific Ocean and comprises four prevailing ocean currents: the North Pacific Current to the north, the California Current to the east, the North Equatorial Current to the south, and the Kuroshio Current to the west.

Found eddy size of the Indian Ocean Gyres are much larger than the gyres of the other mid-latitude western boundary currents (the Indian Ocean Gyres ~ 300-500 nmi > the Gulf Stream / Kuroshio ~ 50 – 100 nmi) 1971 Düing & Szekelda : the baroclinic mode is the dominant mode of the Somali current 1972,1973 Leetma : local winds are crucial to the onset of the Somali Current. 1975 Colborn : climatological analysis of the entire Indian Ocean from bathythermograph and hydrocast observations 1976 Hurlburt & Thompson : Characterize the Somali current as a time-dependent, baroclinic, inertial boundary current. 1976 Bruce : time-series analyses, XBT cross-section measurement by the EXXON tankers 1979 USNS WILKES : the Great Whirl (Prime Eddy) and the Socotra Eddy together with the strong shear zone along the eastern edge of the Great Whirl were observed during late August and early September 1979.

Tornadoes have high Rossby numbers, so, while tornado-associated centrifugal forces are quite substantial, Coriolis forces associated with tornadoes are for practical purposes negligible. Because surface ocean currents are driven by the movement of wind over the water's surface, the Coriolis force also affects the movement of ocean currents and cyclones as well. Many of the ocean's largest currents circulate around warm, high-pressure areas called gyres. Though the circulation is not as significant as that in the air, the deflection caused by the Coriolis effect is what creates the spiralling pattern in these gyres.

South Equatorial Current (in black) The South Equatorial Current are ocean currents in the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Ocean that flow east-to-west between the equator and about 20 degrees south. In the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, it extends across the equator to about 5 degrees north. Within the southern hemisphere, the South Equatorial Current is the westward limb of the very large-scale subtropical gyres. These gyres are driven by the combination of trade winds in the tropics and westerly winds that are found south of about 30 degrees south, through a rather complicated process that includes western boundary current intensification.

Amphipod with curved exoskeleton and two long and two short antennae The growth of phytoplankton populations is dependent on light levels and nutrient availability. The chief factor limiting growth varies from region to region in the world's oceans. On a broad scale, growth of phytoplankton in the oligotrophic tropical and subtropical gyres is generally limited by nutrient supply, while light often limits phytoplankton growth in subarctic gyres. Environmental variability at multiple scales influences the nutrient and light available for phytoplankton, and as these organisms form the base of the marine food web, this variability in phytoplankton growth influences higher trophic levels.

The five major ocean gyres In oceanography, a gyre () is any large system of circulating ocean currents, particularly those involved with large wind movements. Gyres are caused by the Coriolis effect; planetary vorticity, horizontal friction and vertical friction determine the circulatory patterns from the wind stress curl (torque).Heinemann, B. and the Open University (1998) Ocean circulation, Oxford University Press: Page 98 Gyre can refer to any type of vortex in an atmosphere or a sea, even one that is man-made, but it is most commonly used in terrestrial oceanography to refer to the major ocean systems.

Other similar organizations working to reduce plastic pollution include 5 Gyres, Break Free From Plastic, Changing Tides Foundation, Friends of Ocean Action, Greenpeace, Lonely Whale, Marine Litter Solutions, OceanCare, Ocean Conservancy, Oceana, Parley for the Oceans, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, Surfrider Foundation, and The Last Straw.

The world's largest ocean gyres Western boundary currents are warm, deep, narrow, and fast flowing currents that form on the west side of ocean basins due to western intensification. They carry warm water from the tropics poleward. Examples include the Gulf Stream, the Agulhas Current, and the Kuroshio.

Significant ocean currents involved in the circulation of the North Pacific Subtropical and Subpolar gyres The North Pacific Gyre (NPG) or North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG), located in the northern Pacific Ocean, is one of the five major oceanic gyres. This gyre covers most of the northern Pacific Ocean. It is the largest ecosystem on Earth, located between the equator and 50° N latitude, and comprising 20 million square kilometers. The gyre has a clockwise circular pattern and is formed by four prevailing ocean currents: the North Pacific Current to the north, the California Current to the east, the North Equatorial Current to the south, and the Kuroshio Current to the west.

Location of the Weddell Gyre in the Weddell Sea. The Weddell Gyre is one of the two gyres that exist within the Southern Ocean. The gyre is formed by interactions between the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Antarctic Continental Shelf. The gyre is located in the Weddell Sea, and rotates clockwise.

Emiliania huxleyi is considered a ubiquitous species. It exhibits one of the largest temperature ranges (1-30 °C) of any coccolithophores species. It has been observed under a range of nutrient levels from oligotrophic (subtropical gyres) to eutrophic waters (upwelling zones/ Norwegian fjords).Winter, A., Jordan, R.W. & Roth, P.H., 1994.

Studies of mesopelagic fishes of central subtropical waters are scarce. The few studies that do exist found that mesopelagic fish species are not uniformly distributed throughout the subtropical Pacific Ocean. Their geographic ranges conform to patterns shown by zooplankton. Some of the species found are restricted to these low-productivity central gyres.

This is largely through the disruption of accumulated sediments in areas that deep ocean currents interact with. Convection currents that disturb areas of the ocean floor such as those that circulate via ocean gyres also affect the concentration and relative sizes of the suspended sediments, and by extension the area's corresponding biotic activity.

In the ocean, the subtropical gyres north and south of the equator are regions in which the nutrients required for phytoplankton growth (for instance, nitrate, phosphate and silicic acid) are strongly depleted all year round. These areas are described as oligotrophic and exhibit low surface chlorophyll. They are occasionally described as "ocean deserts".

Pilskaln et al., 2005 However, Pilskaln et al. found that in the NPSG, marine snow was at a higher abundance than expected and were surprisingly comparable to a deep coastal upwelling system. Higher nutrient value may be because of Rhizosolenia mats, which also play an important role in contributing to marine snow in subtropical gyres.

Morrissey was slated to be the opening act of the European tour, but he suddenly and unexpectedly quit just before the Aberdeen Exhibition Centre performance on 29 November 1995.Nicholas Pegg, The Complete David Bowie, Reynolds & Hearn Ltd, 2004, The support slot was filled on later dates by The Gyres, Echobelly, Placebo and a variety of local bands.

A summary of the path of the thermohaline circulation. Blue paths represent deep-water currents, while red paths represent surface currents. Using rudimentary observation techniques, the circulation of the surface ocean can be determined. In the Atlantic basin, surface waters flow from the south towards the north in general, while also creating gyres in the northern and southern Atlantic.

Some drift bottles were not found for more than a century after being launched. Floating objects may ride gyres (large circulating current systems) that are present in each ocean, and may be transferred from one ocean's gyre to another's. Further, objects may be sidetracked by wind, storms, countercurrents, and ocean current variation. From Smithsonian, July 2001, pp. 36-42.

Because air must conserve its angular momentum, this flow configuration induces a cyclonic gyre equatorward and westward of the storm center and an anticyclonic gyre poleward and eastward of the storm center. The combined flow of these gyres acts to advect the storm slowly poleward and westward. This effect occurs even if there is zero environmental flow.

Another method to gather artificial litter has been proposed by The Ocean Cleanup's Boyan Slat. He suggested using platforms with arms to gather the debris, situated inside the current of gyres. The SAS Ocean Phoenix ship is somewhat similar in design. Another issue is that removing marine debris from our oceans can potentially cause more harm than good.

Antarctic Fish Biology: Evolution in a Unique Environment. San Diego, California: Academic Press, Inc. The ACC is an oceanic current that moves in a clockwise northeast direction, and can be up to wide. This current formed 25-22 million years ago, and thermally isolated the Southern Ocean by separating it from the warm subtropical gyres to the north.

Physical characteristics like weak thermohaline circulation in the North Pacific and the fact that it is mostly blocked by land in the north, also help facilitate this circulation. As depth increases, these gyres in the North Pacific grow smaller and weaker, and the high pressure at the center of the Subtropical Gyre will migrate poleward and westward.

It then splits into two streams that move northwards into the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Here it is gradually warmed, becomes less dense, rises towards the surface and loops back on itself. It takes a thousand years for this circulation pattern to be completed. Besides gyres, there are temporary surface currents that occur under specific conditions.

Map of the five major oceanic gyres Besides coastal exploration, Portuguese also made trips off in the ocean to gather meteorological and oceanographic information (in these were discovered the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, and Sargasso Sea). The knowledge of wind patterns and currents, the trade winds and the oceanic gyres in the Atlantic, and the determination of latitude led to the discovery of the best ocean route back from Africa: crossing the Central Atlantic to the latitude of the Azores, using the permanent favorable winds and currents that spin clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere because of atmospheric circulation and the effect of Coriolis, facilitating the way to Lisbon and thus enabling the Portuguese venturing increasingly farther from shore, the maneuver that became known as the "volta do mar" ().

In the Pacific Ocean, the gyres still form, but there is comparatively very little large scale meridional (North-South) movement. For deep waters, there are two areas where density causes waters to sink into the deep ocean. These are in the North Atlantic and the Antarctic. The deep water masses formed are North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) and Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW).

Stretch kreisels are a "double gyre" kreisel design, where the tank length is at least twice the height. Using two downwelling inlets on both sides of the tank lets gravity create two gyres in the tank. A single downwelling inlet may be used in the middle as well. The top of a stretch kreisel may be open or closed with a lid.

Ocean gyres collect floating pollutants (and other flotsam). The Great Pacific garbage patch in the central North Pacific Ocean is a gyre of marine debris particles and floating trash halfway between Hawaii and California. It covers an indeterminate large zone depending on plastic concentration chosen to define it. It is estimated 80,000 metric tons of plastic, totaling 1.8 trillion pieces.

As a direct result of this circular pattern, gyres act like giant whirlpools and become traps for anthropogenic pollutants, such as marine debris. The NPSG has become recognized for the large quantity of plastic debris floating just below the surface in the center of the gyre. This area has recently received a lot of media attention and is commonly referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Location of the Ross Gyre in the Ross Sea The Ross Gyre is one of the two gyres that exist within the Southern Ocean. The gyre is located in the Ross Sea, and rotates clockwise. The gyre is formed by interactions between the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Antarctic Continental Shelf. Sea ice has been noted to persist in the central area of the gyre. p. 10.

Large values of the BLT are typically found in the equatorial regions and can be as high as 50 m. Above the barrier layer, the well mixed layer may be due to local precipitation exceeding evaporation (e.g. in the western Pacific), monsoon related river runoff (e.g. in the northern Indian Ocean), or advection of salty water subducted in the subtropics (found in all subtropical ocean gyres).

Subpolar gyres form at high latitudes (around 60°). Circulation of surface wind and ocean water is counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, around a low-pressure area, such as the persistent Aleutian Low and the Icelandic Low. Surface currents generally move outward from the center of the system. This drives the Ekman transport, which creates an upwelling of nutrient-rich water from the lower depths.

Regions of significant net DOC production (broad arrows) include coastal and equatorial upwelling regions that support much of the global new production. DOC is transported into and around the subtropical gyres with the wind-driven surface circulation. Export takes place if exportable DOC (elevated concentrations indicated by dark blue fields) is present during overturning of the water column. precursor for deep and intermediate water mass formation.

Map of the five major oceanic gyres Besides coastal exploration, Portuguese also made trips off in the ocean to gather meteorological and oceanographic information (in these were discovered the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, and Sargasso Sea). The knowledge of wind patterns and currents – the trade winds and the oceanic gyres in the Atlantic, and the determination of latitude led to the discovery of the best ocean route back from Africa: crossing the Central Atlantic to the latitude of the Azores, using the permanent favorable winds and currents that spin clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere because of atmospheric circulation and the effect of Coriolis, facilitating the way to Lisbon and thus enabling the Portuguese venturing increasingly farther from shore, the maneuver that became known as "Volta do mar". In 1565, the application of this principle in the Pacific Ocean led the Spanish discovering the Manila Galleon trade route.

At TEDxDelft2012, Boyan Slat unveiled a concept for removing large amounts of marine debris from oceanic gyres. Calling his project The Ocean Cleanup, he proposed to use surface currents to let debris drift to collection platforms. Operating costs would be relatively modest and the operation would be so efficient that it might even be profitable. The concept makes use of floating booms that divert rather than catch the debris.

The inflow of freshwater, representing a third of the freshwater volume flowing into the Mediterranean, makes the Adriatic a dilution basin for the Mediterranean Sea. The Middle and South Adriatic Gyres (SAG), are significant cyclonic circulation features, with the former being intermittent and the latter permanent. The SAG measures in diameter. It contributes to the flow of bottom water from the Adriatic to the Levantine Basin through the Ionian Sea.

The currents of the North Pacific Gyre spiral inwards, depositing debris in the convergence zone. Once waterborne, debris becomes mobile. Flotsam can be blown by the wind, or follow the flow of ocean currents, often ending up in the middle of oceanic gyres where currents are weakest. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one such example of this, comprising a vast region of the North Pacific Ocean rich with anthropogenic wastes.

Due to the Coriolis effect the surface water gets pulled 90° to the right of the wind current, therefore causing the water to converge along the coast boundary, leading to Ekman pumping. In the open ocean Ekman pumping occurs with gyres. Specifically, in the subtropics, between 20°N and 50°N, there is Ekman pumping as the tradewinds shift to westerlies causing a pile up of surface water.

CDW transport onto the shelf is known to be persistent and periodic, and is thought to occur at specific locations influenced by bottom topography. The circulation of the Ross Sea is dominated by a wind-driven gyre. The flow is strongly influenced by three submarine ridges that run from southwest to northeast. Flow over the shelf below the surface layer consists of two anticyclonic gyres connected by a central cyclonic flow.

Due to the increased frequency of cyclones which cut off from the main belt of the westerlies during the summer and fall, subtropical cyclones are significantly more frequent across the North Atlantic than the northwestern Pacific Ocean.Mark A. Lander (2004). 7A.5 Monsoon Depressions, Monsoon Gyres, Midget Tropical Cyclones, TUTT Cells, and High Intensity After Recurvature: Lessons Learned From Use of Dvorak's Techniques in the World's Most Prolific Tropical-Cyclone Basin.

The isotopes dissolved in water are particularly useful in studying global circulation. For example, differences in lateral isotopic ratios within an ocean can indicate strong water fronts or gyres. Conversely, the isotopes attached to particles can be used to study mass transport within water columns. For instance, high levels of Am or Pu can indicate downwelling when observed at great depths, or upwelling when observed at the surface.

Sea scallops often occur in aggregations called beds. Beds may be sporadic (perhaps lasting for a few years) or essentially permanent (e.g., commercial beds supporting the Georges Bank fishery). The highest concentration of many permanent beds appears to correspond to areas of suitable temperatures, food availability, substrate, and where physical oceanographic features such as fronts and gyres may keep larval stages in the vicinity of the spawning population.

The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG) is the largest contiguous ecosystem on earth. In oceanography, a subtropical gyre is a ring-like system of ocean currents rotating clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Southern Hemisphere caused by the Coriolis Effect. They generally form in large open ocean areas that lie between land masses. The NPSG is the largest of the gyres as well as the largest ecosystem on our planet.

Marine debris on the Hawaiian coast Marine debris, also known as marine litter, is human-created waste that has deliberately or accidentally been released in a sea or ocean. Floating oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the center of gyres and on coastlines, frequently washing aground, when it is known as beach litter or tidewrack. Deliberate disposal of wastes at sea is called ocean dumping. Naturally occurring debris, such as driftwood, are also present.

Eighty percent of marine debris is plastic. Plastics accumulate because they typically do not biodegrade as many other substances do. They photodegrade on exposure to sunlight, although they do so only under dry conditions, as water inhibits photolysis. In a 2014 study using computer models, scientists from the group 5 Gyres, estimated 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic weighing 269,000 tons were dispersed in oceans in similar amount in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

Gyres are larger versions of circles that steadily decrease in diameter as the whale performs each circuit. Ellipses cover a greater area than the former two maneuvers as the whale swims a long and short axis – the former can be greater than at times. Ellipses can be maintained for long periods of time and may include feeding circles within them as well as a number of engulfing maneuvers. Unlike circles, surface traces are rarely apparent.

Exceptions to this rule are areas of permanently enriched nutrients such as upwelling areas and coastal watersheds. In the nutrient-depleted areas of the oceans, such as the central gyres, Synechococcus is apparently always present, although only at low concentrations, ranging from a few to 4×10³ cells per ml. Vertically Synechococcus is usually relatively equitably distributed throughout the mixed layer and exhibits an affinity for the higher-light areas. Below the mixed layer, cell concentrations rapidly decline.

Body Burden and 5 Gyres are the first of a series of Safe Planet films. These films contributed to the elevation of awareness and spread of the idea of chemical body burden and plastic pollution of the oceans. The films carry the message that no one is immune from exposures to hazardous chemicals. They highlight how vulnerable communities face heightened risk of exposures to toxic chemicals and how action is needed to protect people and the planet.

Western boundary currents transport organisms long distances rapidly and a variety of commercially important marine organisms migrate in these currents in the course of completing their livesMann, K.H. and J.R.N. Lazier. (2006). Dynamics of Marine Ecosystems. Blackwell Scientific Publications, 2nd Edition, and the Kuroshio Current may be important for the long-distance dispersal of larvae along the Ryukyu island chain. Subtropical gyres occupy a large fraction of the world's ocean and are more productive than originally thought.

The album cover was shot on a beach of the windward side of the Hawaiian Islands where North Pacific Gyre carries a lot of plastic onto the beach. All of the plastic used was found on the beach within a 90-meter radius, and found within one hour. The plastic found was featured in the "You Can't Control It" music video. Charities such as "5 Gyres," and the "Bahamas Plastic Movement" helped collect plastic from the cover.

Jack London's story "Make Westing" and the circumstances preceding the mutiny on the Bounty poignantly illustrate the difficulty it caused for mariners seeking to round Cape Horn westbound on the clipper ship route from New York to California. The eastbound clipper route, which is the fastest sailing route around the world, follows the ACC around three continental capes – Cape Agulhas (Africa), South East Cape (Australia), and Cape Horn (South America). The current creates the Ross and Weddell gyres.

In geophysical fluid dynamics, the f-plane approximation is an approximation where the Coriolis parameter, denoted f, is set to a constant value. This approximation is frequently used for the analysis of highly idealized tropical cyclones. Using a constant Coriolis parameter prevents the formation of beta gyres which are largely responsible for the North-westward direction of most tropical cyclones. Rossby waves also depend on variations in f, and do not occur in the f-plane approximation.

Marshall holds degrees in physics and atmospheric science from Imperial College, London, where he was a faculty member in the Physics Department. Marshall joined MIT in 1991, and has worked there ever since. Marshall studies the circulation of the ocean, its coupling to the atmosphere and the role of the oceans in climate. Specific research interests include ocean convection and thermohaline circulation, ocean gyres and circumpolar currents, geophysical fluid dynamics, climate dynamics and numerical modeling of ocean and atmosphere.

Benthic microbes in organic-poor sediments in oligotrophic oceanic regions, such as the South Pacific Gyre, are hypothesized to metabolize radiolytic hydrogen (H2) as a primary energy source. The oceanic regions within the South Pacific Gyre (SPG), and other subtropical gyres, are characterized by low primary productivity in the surface ocean; i.e. they are oligotrophic. The center of the SPG is the furthest oceanic province from a continent and contains the clearest ocean water on Earth with ≥ 0.14 mg chlorophyll per m3.

Due to this seasonal wind cycle, the currents of the Indian Ocean, which make up the Indian Ocean gyre, are directly affected, causing reversal.Tomczak, Matthias & J. Stuart Godfrey: Regional Oceanography: and Introduction 2nd Edition. (2003). Like the other gyres, it contains a garbage patch. A garbage patch is a suspended region of marine debris within the water column that circulate the gyre constantly. The Indian Ocean’s garbage patch covers a massive area: at least five million square kilometers (two million square miles).

The pattern of distribution closely mirrored models of oceanic currents with the North Pacific Gyre, or Great Pacific Garbage Patch, being the highest density of plastic accumulation. The other four gyres include the North Atlantic Gyre between the North America and Africa, the South Atlantic Gyre located between eastern South America and the tip of Africa, the South Pacific Gyre located west of South America, and the Indian Ocean Gyre found east of south Africa listed in order of decreasing size.

Islands situated within gyres frequently have coastlines flooded by waste that washes ashore; prime examples are Midway and Hawaii. Clean-up teams around the world patrol beaches to attack this environmental threat. More than 37 million pieces of plastic debris have accumulated on Henderson Island, a remote Pitcairn island in the South Pacific, reported to be the highest density of debris reported anywhere in the world, yet the trash accounts for only 1.98 seconds’ worth of the annual global production of plastic.

The biggest culprits are rivers and with them many agriculture fertilizer chemicals as well as livestock and human waste. The excess of oxygen-depleting chemicals leads to hypoxia and the creation of a dead zone.Sebastian A. Gerlach "Marine Pollution", Springer, Berlin (1975) Marine debris, which is also known as marine litter, describes human-created waste floating in a body of water. Oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the center of gyres and coastlines, frequently washing aground where it is known as beach litter.

The five major ocean gyres. In 1948, Munk took a year's sabbatical to visit Sverdrup in Oslo, Norway on his first Guggenheim Fellowship. He worked on the problem of wind-driven ocean circulation, obtaining the first comprehensive solution for currents based on observed wind patterns. This included two types of friction: horizontal friction between water masses moving at different velocities or between water and the edges of the oceanic basin, and friction from a vertical velocity gradient in the top layer of the ocean (the Ekman layer).

Applications have included the measurement of deep water formation in the Greenland Sea in 1989, measurement of ocean tides, and the estimation of ocean mesoscale dynamics by combining tomography, satellite altimetry, and in situ data with ocean dynamical models. Munk advocated for acoustical measurements of the ocean for much of his career, such as his 1986 Bakerian Lecture Acoustic Monitoring of Ocean Gyres, the 1995 monograph Ocean Acoustic Tomography written with Worcester and Wunsch, and his 2010 Crafoord Prize lecture The Sound of Climate Change.

The North Atlantic garbage patch originates from human waste that travels from continental rivers into the ocean. Once the trash has made it into the ocean, it is centralized by gyres, which collect trash in large masses. The surface of the garbage patch consists of microplastics such as polyethylene and polypropylene which make up common household items. Denser material that is thought to exist under the surface of the ocean includes plastic called polyethylene terephthalate (PETE) that is used to make soft drink and water bottles.

A large number of groups and individuals are active in preventing or educating about marine debris. For example, 5 Gyres is an organization aimed at reducing plastics pollution in the oceans, and was one of two organizations that recently researched the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Heal the Bay is another organization, focusing on protecting California's Santa Monica Bay, by sponsoring beach cleanup programs along with other activities. Marina DeBris is an artist focusing most of her recent work on educating people about beach trash.

Litter can remain visible for extended periods of time before it eventually biodegrades, with some items made of condensed glass, styrofoam or plastic possibly remaining in the environment for over a million years. About 18 percent of litter, usually traveling through stormwater systems, ends up in local streams, rivers, and waterways. Uncollected litter can accrete and flow into streams, local bays and estuaries. Litter in the ocean either washes up on beaches or collects in Ocean gyres such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

In the Gulf of St. Lawrence, minke whales exhibit three types of behaviors: entrapment maneuvers, engulfment maneuvers, and entrapment/engulfment maneuvers. Entrapment maneuvers include circles, gyres, ellipses, figure-of-eights, and hyperbolas. Circles involve a whale, lying on its side with its ventral surface facing its intended prey, swimming in a circle 1.5 to 2.5 times its diameter and lunging mouth agape across the diameter of this circle. As the whale mounts the water column the movement of its flukes create a print or trace.

DOC is also exported with subduction in the gyres. In regions where DOCenriched subtropical water is prevented by polar frontal systems from serving as a precursor for overturning circulation (such as at the sites of Antarctic Bottom Water formation in the Southern Ocean) DOC export is a weak component of the biological pump. Waters south of the Antarctic Polar Front lack significant exportable DOC (depicted by light blue field) during winter.Hansell DA and Craig AC (2015) "Marine Dissolved Organic Matter and the Carbon Cycle".

Map of the five major oceanic gyres Besides coastal exploration, Portuguese ships also made trips further out to gather meteorological and oceanographic information. These voyages revealed the archipelagos of Bissagos Islands where the Portuguese were defeated by native people in 1535, Madeira, the Azores, Cape Verde, Sao Tome, Trindade and Martim Vaz, Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago, Fernando de Noronha, Corisco, Elobey Grande, Elobey Chico Annobon Island, Ascension Island, Bioko Island, Falkland Islands, Principe Island, Saint Helena Island, Tristan da Cunha Island and Sargasso Sea. The knowledge of wind patterns and currents, the trade winds and the oceanic gyres in the Atlantic, and the determination of latitude led to the discovery of the best ocean route back from Africa: crossing the Central Atlantic to the Azores, using the winds and currents that spin clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere because of atmospheric circulation and the effect of Coriolis, facilitating the way to Lisbon and thus enabling the Portuguese to venture farther from shore, a manoeuvre that became known as the "volta do mar" (return of the sea). In 1565, the application of this principle in the Pacific Ocean led the Spanish discovering the Manila Galleon trade route.

Its large size and distance from shore has caused the NPSG to be poorly sampled and thus poorly understood.Karl, D. 1999 The main ocean currents involved with the North Pacific Gyre The life processes in open-ocean ecosystems are a sink for the atmosphere’s increasing . Gyres make up a large proportion, approximately 75%, of what we refer to as the open ocean, or the area of the ocean that does not consist of coastal areas. They are considered oligotrophic, or nutrient poor because they are far from terrestrial runoff.

The deep benthic habitats of the ocean gyres have been thought to typically consist of some of the most food-poor regions on the planet.(Shulenberger and Hessler, 1974) One of the sources of nutrients to this deep ocean habitat is marine snow. Marine snow consists of detritus, dead organic matter, which falls from the surface waters where productivity is highest and exports carbon and nitrogen from the surface mixed layer to the deep ocean. Data on the abundance of marine snow to the deep ocean floor is lacking in this large ecosystem.

The most characteristic of these is the seasonal cycle (caused by the consequences of the Earth's axial tilt), although wind magnitudes additionally have strong spatial components. Consequently, primary production in temperate regions such as the North Atlantic is highly seasonal, varying with both incident light at the water's surface (reduced in winter) and the degree of mixing (increased in winter). In tropical regions, such as the gyres in the middle of the major basins, light may only vary slightly across the year, and mixing may only occur episodically, such as during large storms or hurricanes.

Thus, such solid waste products are called marine debris that can be seen all through coastlines and on many beaches through the world. There can be many sources of marine debris such as land-based, marine-based, and other anthropocentric activities. Million tons of land-based waste products such as plastics, papers, woods, and metals end up in seas, oceans, and beaches through the wind, oceans currents (five major gyres), sewage, runoff, storm- water drains and rivers. Massive amount of marine debris has become a severe menace to the marine environment, aquatic life and humankind.

The North Atlantic Gyre is one of five major ocean gyres. The North Atlantic garbage patch is an area of man-made marine debris found floating within the North Atlantic Gyre, originally documented in 1972. Based on a 22-year research study conducted by the Sea Education Association, the patch is estimated to be hundreds of kilometers across in size, with a density of more than 200,000 pieces of debris per square kilometer. The source of the garbage originates from human waste traveling from the rivers into the ocean and mainly consists of microplastics.

BLT formation in the subtropics is associated with seasonal change in the mixed layer depth, a sharper gradient in sea surface salinity (SSS) than normal, and subduction across this SSS front.Sato, K., T. Suga, and K. Hanawa, Barrier layers in the subtropical gyres of the world's oceans, Geophysical Research Letters, 33 (8), 2006. In particular, BLT is formed in winter season in the equatorward flank of subtropical salinity maxima. During early winter, the atmosphere cools the surface and strong wind and negative buoyancy forcing mixes temperature to a deep layer.

The organization conducts scientific research into oceanic plastic pollution. It was founded in 2013 by Boyan Slat, a Dutch-born inventor-entrepreneur of Croatian and Dutch origin who serves as its CEO. It has conducted two expeditions to the North Pacific Gyre, the Mega Expedition and the Aerial Expedition, and continues to publish scientific papers. Their ocean system consists of a floating barrier at the surface of the water in the oceanic gyres, that collects marine debris as the system is pushed by wind, waves and current, and slowed down by a sea anchor.

Other circulation features include the anticyclonic gyres which are shed by the Loop Current and travel westward where they eventually dissipate, and a permanent cyclonic gyre in the Bay of Campeche. The Bay of Campeche in Mexico constitutes a major arm of the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally, the gulf's shoreline is fringed by numerous bays and smaller inlets. A number of rivers empty into the gulf, most notably the Mississippi River and Rio Grande in the northern gulf, and the Grijalva and Usumacinta rivers in the southern gulf.

He was later in life invited to court by King John III of Portugal and was named Royal Cosmographer in 1529.Bailey Diffie, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415–1580 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press), page 142 Oceanography was born as seafarers began to investigate the nature of the seas. Henry the Navigator himself, along with his expeditions, took part in studying currents and wind patterns. Information on gyres, currents, tides, and trade winds were all recorded and studied in order to determine if the information could benefit sailors.

Tropical regions (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator, 0° latitude) are generally hot all year round and tend to experience a rainy season during the summer months, and a dry season during the winter months. In the Northern Hemisphere, objects moving across or above the surface of the Earth tend to turn to the right because of the Coriolis effect. As a result, large-scale horizontal flows of air or water tend to form clockwise-turning gyres. These are best seen in ocean circulation patterns in the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans.

Barrier layer formation in the subtropics is associated with seasonal change in the mixed layer depth, a sharper gradient in sea surface salinity (SSS) than normal, and subduction across this SSS front.Sato, K., T. Suga, and K. Hanawa, Barrier layers in the subtropical gyres of the world's oceans, Geophysical Research Letters, 33 (8), 2006. In particular, the barrier layer is formed in winter season in the equatorward flank of subtropical salinity maxima. During early winter, the atmosphere cools the surface and strong wind and negative buoyancy forcing mixes temperature to a deep layer.

This flood would have descended a relatively gentle ramp into the Mediterranean basin, not as a giant waterfall. Later simulations using more explicit geography constrain the flow to about 100 Sverdrup, which is about . They further indicate the formation of large gyres in the Alboran Sea during the flooding and that the flood eroded the Camarinal Sill at a rate of . The exact size of the flood is dependent on the pre-flood water levels in the Mediterranean and higher water levels there would result in a much smaller flood.

Charleston Bump (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) The Charleston Bump is a deepwater rocky ocean bottom feature approximately 90 miles (140 km) southeast of Charleston, South Carolina. The Bump, rising from the Blake Plateau, lies in the path of the Gulf Stream and deflects the Gulf Stream offshore away from the coast of the eastern United States. This deflection amplifies downstream eddies and gyres and enhances upwelling of nutrient rich waters onto the continental shelf. These nutrient inputs support an ecosystem of plankton, fish, and other sea life.

During 33 expeditions with the research vessel E. W. Scripps between 1938 and 1941 he produced a detailed oceanographic dataset off the coast of California. He also developed a simple theory of the general ocean circulation postulating a dynamical vorticity balance between the wind-stress curl and the meridional gradient of the Coriolis parameter, the Sverdrup balance. This balance describes wind-driven ocean gyres away from continental margins at western boundaries. After leaving Scripps, he became director of the Norwegian Polar Institute in Oslo and continued to contribute to oceanography, ocean biology and polar research.

From here the "C-shape" then flows eastward comprising the Subtropical Countercurrent at roughly 20 – 25⁰N, then finally the "C" wraps back towards the west forming the North Equatorial Current just south of 20⁰N. It is common for subtropical gyres to have this "C-shape" surface flow. The Subtropical Countercurrent is a shallow area of this "C"; at only about 250 dbar under the surface, circulation is a simpler closed, anticyclonic gyre. Narrow east-west frontal zones that cross the Pacific are less than 100 km wide.

Panthalassa was a hemisphere-sized ocean, much larger than the modern Pacific. It could be expected that the large size would result in relatively simple ocean current circulation patterns, such as a single gyre in each hemisphere, and a mostly stagnant and stratified ocean. Modelling studies, however, suggest that an east-west sea surface temperature (SST) gradient was present in which the coldest water was brought to the surface by upwelling in the east while the warmest water extended west into the Tethys Ocean. Subtropical gyres dominated the circulation pattern.

During the first years of marriage, they experimented with automatic writing; she contacted a variety of spirits and guides they called "Instructors" while in a trance. The spirits communicated a complex and esoteric system of philosophy and history, which the couple developed into an exposition using geometrical shapes: phases, cones, and gyres. Yeats devoted much time to preparing this material for publication as A Vision (1925). In 1924, he wrote to his publisher T. Werner Laurie, admitting: "I dare say I delude myself in thinking this book my book of books".

Since oxygen is not being produced as a byproduct of photosynthesis below the euphotic zone, these microbes use up what oxygen is in the water as they break down the falling organic matter thus creating the lower oxygen conditions. Physical processes then constrain the mixing and isolate this low oxygen water from outside water. Vertical mixing is constrained due to the separation from the mixed layer by depth. Horizontal mixing is constrained by bathymetry and boundaries formed by interactions with sub-tropical gyres and other major current systems.

The ocean's currents are mainly controlled by the monsoon. Two large gyres, one in the northern hemisphere flowing clockwise and one south of the equator moving anticlockwise (including the Agulhas Current and Agulhas Return Current), constitute the dominant flow pattern. During the winter monsoon (November–February), however, circulation is reversed north of 30°S and winds are weakened during winter and the transitional periods between the monsoons. The Indian Ocean contains the largest submarine fans of the world, the Bengal Fan and Indus Fan, and the largest areas of slope terraces and rift valleys.

In 2012, Poynter helped launch the World Wide Fund for Nature's (formerly World Wildlife Fund) mountain gorilla adoption programme. His journey through the Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda and Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda brought him face-to-face with endangered gorillas and helped bring awareness to their plight. Poynter is also an active participant of The 5 Gyres Institute and their mission to eradicate the pollution of plastic in the ocean. He supports the banning of microplastic materials across Europe, citing the serious detrimental impact of these substances on the marine environment as the reason of his disapproval.

Map of the five major ocean gyres Route from Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico Portuguese trade routes (blue) and the Spanish trade routes (white). Portuguese ships went almost to Brazil before rounding Africa and to the Azores before turning east to Lisbon. The Spanish Manila galleons used the northern Trade winds going west and the westerlies going east. The route of the Manila Galleon from Manila to Acapulco depended upon successful application of the Atlantic phenomenon to the Pacific ocean: in discovering the North Pacific Gyre, captains of returning galleons had to reach the latitudes of Japan before they could safely cross.

The Indian Ocean gyre The Indian Ocean gyre, located in the Indian Ocean, is one of the five major oceanic gyres, large systems of rotating ocean currents, which together form the backbone of the global conveyor belt. The Indian Ocean gyre is composed of two major currents: the South Equatorial Current, and the West Australian Current. Normally moving counter-clockwise, in the winter the Indian Ocean gyre reverses direction due to the seasonal winds of the South Asian Monsoon. In the summer, the land is warmer than the ocean, so surface winds blow from the ocean to the land.

The second predicts that they are much older, evolving 15-20 million years ago. Although the evolution of icefish is still disputed, it is widely accepted that the formation of the Antarctic Polar Frontal Zone (APFZ) and the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) marks the beginning of the evolution of Antarctic fishes. The ACC is an oceanic current that moves in a clockwise northeast direction, and can be up to 10,000 km wide. This current formed 25-22 million years ago, and thermally isolated the Southern Ocean by separating it from the warm subtropical gyres to the north.

The oceans may contain as much as one hundred million tons of plastic. It is estimated that each garbage patch in the ocean have up to one million tons of trash swirling around in them, sometimes extending down to around one hundred feet below the surface. Some items that have been extracted from these garbage patches are: a drum of hazardous chemicals, plastic hangers, tires, cable cords, a ton of tangled netting etc. Over 40% of oceans are classified as subtropical gyres, a quarter of the planet’s surface area has become an accumulator of floating plastic debris.

Gerlach: Marine Pollution, Springer, Berlin (1975) Marine debris, also known as marine litter, is human-created waste that has ended up floating in a lake, sea, ocean, or waterway. Oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the center of gyres and coastlines, frequently washing aground where it is known as beach litter. From 1946 to 1958, Marshall Islands served as the Pacific Proving Grounds for the United States and was the site of 67 nuclear tests on various atolls. Several nuclear weapons were lost in the Pacific Ocean, including one-megaton bomb lost during the 1965 Philippine Sea A-4 incident.

Cyanobacteria remained principal primary producers throughout the Proterozoic Eon (2500–543 Ma), in part because the redox structure of the oceans favored photoautotrophs capable of nitrogen fixation. Green algae joined blue-greens as major primary producers on continental shelves near the end of the Proterozoic, but only with the Mesozoic (251–65 Ma) radiations of dinoflagellates, coccolithophorids, and diatoms did primary production in marine shelf waters take modern form. Cyanobacteria remain critical to marine ecosystems as primary producers in oceanic gyres, as agents of biological nitrogen fixation, and, in modified form, as the plastids of marine algae.

An equilibrium tidal bulge does not really exist on Earth because the continents do not allow this mathematical solution to take place. Oceanic tides actually rotate around the ocean basins as vast gyres around several amphidromic points where no tide exists. The Moon pulls on each individual undulation as Earth rotates—some undulations are ahead of the Moon, others are behind it, whereas still others are on either side. The "bulges" that actually do exist for the Moon to pull on (and which pull on the Moon) are the net result of integrating the actual undulations over all the world's oceans.

Vertical profiles are strongly influenced by hydrologic conditions and can be very variable both seasonally and spatially. Overall, Synechococcus abundance often parallels that of Prochlorococcus in the water column. In the Pacific high- nutrient, low-chlorophyll zone and in temperate open seas where stratification was recently established both profiles parallel each other and exhibit abundance maxima just about the subsurface chlorophyll maximum. The factors controlling the abundance of Synechococcus still remain poorly understood, especially considering that even in the most nutrient-depleted regions of the central gyres, where cell abundances are often very low, population growth rates are often high and not drastically limited.

Evidence pointing to the existence of a garbage patch in the South Pacific gyre was made in early 2011 and its existence was confirmed in mid-2017. The discovery was made after a research voyage made by the 5 Gyres Institute. The voyage ran from March to April 2011, following a route based on a model of ocean currents developed by Nikolia Maximenko of the University of Hawaii, which predicts floating debris accumulation zones. The expedition started taking samples off the coast of Robinson Crusoe Island, Chile, and began working its way west, collecting new samples every 50 nautical miles, reaching the waters off Easter Island, and eventually Pitcairn Island.

All eddies are capable of transporting energy, momentum, heat, physical and chemical water properties, and even small organisms across very large distances. Since eddies mix waters with different properties, they act as an exchange of nutrients from the continental shelf to the deeper ocean as they travel. This makes them ideal hot spots for primary productivity, especially in areas of low nutrients, such as the center of open ocean gyres. The importance of these swirling masses lies in the incredible amount of kinetic energy they are able to transport both horizontally and vertically, their participation in air-sea interaction, and the irreversible mixing of water masses.

Eddy diffusion, eddy dispersion, multipath, or turbulent diffusion is any diffusion process by which substances are mixed in the atmosphere or in any fluid system due to eddy motion.IUPAC Compendium of Chemical Terminology 2nd Edition (1997) Gold Book LinkScience world, wolframe In other words,Glossary of Meteorology Link it is mixing that is caused by eddies that can vary in size from the small Kolmogorov microscales to subtropical gyres. The size of eddies decreases as kinetic energy is lost, until it reaches a small enough size for viscosity to control, resulting in kinetic energy dissipating into heat. The concept of turbulence or turbulent flow causes eddy diffusion to occur.

The 5 Gyres Institute monitored microplastics through a specific protocol for one of the first data sets of plastic content in the Caribbean. On June 13, 2014 he successfully completed the first solo crossing of Lake Ponchatrain in New Orleans, LA in 14 hours 55 minutes. His swim was not only the first solo crossing of the lake (using English Channel/World Open Water Swimming Association Rules), but also a benefit to the 25th anniversary of the Lake Pontchartrain Basin Foundation which has worked to restore the lake. Legendary jazz musician and composer David Amram and bluesman Papa Mali created original music during the swim, and Secret Moonbase Productions and Royal Artists provided nautical themed art.

Larger plastics (called "macroplastics") such as plastic shopping bags can clog the digestive tracts of larger animals when consumed by them and can cause starvation through restricting the movement of food, or by filling the stomach and tricking the animal into thinking it is full. Microplastics on the other hand harm smaller marine life. For example, pelagic plastic pieces in the center of our ocean’s gyres outnumber live marine plankton, and are passed up the food chain to reach all marine life. A 1994 study of the seabed using trawl nets in the North-Western Mediterranean around the coasts of Spain, France, and Italy reported mean concentrations of debris of 1,935 items per square kilometre.

Marine debris is human-created waste that ends up floating in the sea. Oceanic debris tends to accumulate at the centre of gyres and coastlines, frequently washing aground where it is known as beach litter. Eighty percent of all known marine debris is plastic - a component that has been rapidly accumulating since the end of World War II. Plastics accumulate because they don't biodegrade as many other substances do; while they will photodegrade on exposure to the sun, they do so only under dry conditions, as water inhibits this process. Discarded plastic bags, six pack rings and other forms of plastic waste which finish up in the ocean present dangers to wildlife and fisheries.Algalita.

Along with the decrease of atmospheric carbon dioxide reducing the global temperature, orbital factors in ice creation can be seen with 100,000-year and 400,000-year fluctuations in benthic oxygen isotope records. Another major contribution to the expansion of the ice sheet was the creation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The creation of the Antarctic circumpolar current would isolate the cold water around the Antarctic, which would reduce heat transport to the Antarctic along with creating ocean gyres that result in the upwelling of colder bottom waters. The issue with this hypothesis of the consideration of this being a factor for the Eocene-Oligocene transition is the timing of the creation of the circulation is uncertain.

The United Nations Joint Group of Experts on the Scientific Aspects of Marine Pollution (GESAMP) estimated that roughly 80% of ocean pollution comes from anthropogenic activity, with plastics making up 60-95% of it. Plastic particles are found throughout all of the oceans worldwide and they accumulate in gyres located in between Earth's continents. Plastics that persist in the environment come from a wide range of sources including plastic bags, beverage containers, plastic packaging, fishing lines and ropes, and microplastics. Microplastics are defined as plastic particles up to five millimeters in diameter and include fragments from larger, previously broken down plastic items, clothing fibers (acrylic and polyester), and small particles referred to as microbeads.

Accordingly, drift bottles have traveled large distances, with drifts of 4,000 to 6,000 miles and more—sometimes traveling 100 miles per day—not uncommon. Bottles have traveled from the Beaufort Sea above northern Alaska and northwestern Canada to northern Europe; from Antarctica to Tasmania; from Mexico to the Philippines; from Canada's Labrador Sea and Baffin Bay to Irish, French, Scottish, and Norwegian beaches; from the Galapagos Islands to Australia; and from New Zealand to Spain (practically antipodes). Based on empirical data collected since 1901, a computer program called OSCURS (Ocean Surface Current Simulator) digitally simulates motion and timing of floating objects in and between ocean gyres. Originally published in the Alaska Fisheries Science Center Quarterly Report, April–May–June, 1997.

They also elevate awareness and support for the Global Monitoring Plan of the Stockholm Convention, which tracks levels of persistent organic pollutants in humans. The Sea Dragon, an NGO-led research vessel collecting plastic drift waste and fish samples from the oceans’ 5 gyres, has raised awareness of the 9 new POPs covered by the Stockholm Convention, protection of marine life and global food security. The expedition to the South Atlantic gyre landed in Cape Town, South Africa in early December and then set out of Montevideo, Uruguay in early January 2011. Mary Osborne, a professional surfer and model participating in the transatlantic voyage, announced her support for the Safe Planet Campaign at a press event at the Two Oceans Aquarium in Cape Town, South Africa.

A clear paleontological window on cyanobacterial evolution opened about 2000 Ma, revealing an already-diverse biota of Cyanobacteria. Cyanobacteria remained the principal primary producers of oxygen throughout the Proterozoic Eon (2500–543 Ma), in part because the redox structure of the oceans favored photoautotrophs capable of nitrogen fixation. Green algae joined cyanobacteria as the major primary producers of oxygen on continental shelves near the end of the Proterozoic, but it was only with the Mesozoic (251–66 Ma) radiations of dinoflagellates, coccolithophorids, and diatoms did the primary production of oxygen in marine shelf waters take modern form. Cyanobacteria remain critical to marine ecosystems as primary producers of oxygen in oceanic gyres, as agents of biological nitrogen fixation, and, in modified form, as the plastids of marine algae.

Two gigantic eddies at the north west Indian Ocean during Southwest Monsoon The Great Whirl is a huge anti-cyclonic eddy generated by the Somali current flowing in (northern) summer, and one of the two gigantic Indian Ocean Gyres (the other is the Socotra Gyre). The Great Whirl can be observed between 5-10°N and 52-57°E off the Somali coast in the summer season, a location typically around 200 km southwest of the Socotra Gyre (between June to September). However, in the past both the Great Whirl and the Socotra Gyre have been known to occasionally collapse, and their exact locations differ from year to year. The Great Whirl's typical size is 400–600 km in horizontal diameter, and typical surface current velocity is 1.5-2.0 m/s.

The knowledge of wind patterns and currents, the trade winds and the oceanic gyres in the Atlantic, and the determination of latitude led to the discovery of the best ocean route back from Africa: crossing the Central Atlantic to the Azores, using the winds and currents that spin clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere because of atmospheric circulation and the effect of Coriolis, facilitating the way to Lisbon and thus enabling the Portuguese to venture farther from shore, a maneuver that became known as the "volta do mar" (). In 1565, the application of this principle in the Pacific Ocean led the Spanish making the Manila Galleon trade route. There were other factors that counteracted Iberian domination. Whether traveling up the rivers in Africa or encountering the indigenous populations in the New World, both these groups had easily maneuverable canoes that could put lots of pressure on the Portuguese and Spanish.

Sverdrup introduced a potential vorticity argument to connect the net, interior flow of the oceans to the surface wind stress and the incited planetary vorticity perturbations. For instance, Ekman convergence in the sub- tropics (related to the existence of the trade winds in the tropics and the westerlies in the mid-latitudes) was suggested to lead to a downward vertical velocity and therefore, a squashing of the water columns, which subsequently forces the ocean gyre to spin more slowly (via angular momentum conservation). This is accomplished via a decrease in planetary vorticity (since relative vorticity variations are not significant in large ocean circulations), a phenomenon attainable through an equatorially directed, interior flow that characterizes the subtropical gyre. The opposite is applicable when Ekman divergence is induced, leading to Ekman absorption (suction) and a subsequent, water column stretching and poleward return flow, a characteristic of sub- polar gyres.

Many researchers report that the ocean currents transfer floating litter by the five subtropical gyres. Thus, anthropocentric marine debris is present in all oceans, beaches and at the sea surface, even the Arctic sea ice contains small plastics particles or micro-plastics. According to Bhatia (2019), the ten most polluted beaches in the world are: { "type": "FeatureCollection", "features": [ { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ 103.95572662353516, 10.220497303462976 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ 98.76590967178346, 7.676633535361854 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -155.5988931655884, 18.970787529076187 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ 115.1675319671631, -8.726969207892507 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ 72.82279014587404, 19.065808992031442 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ 116.06678009033205, 5.974290189203834 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -43.16159248352051, -22.813766860624725 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ 103.52120876312256, 10.606261093834862 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -70.02342224121095, 18.410726642469253 ] } }, { "type": "Feature", "properties": {}, "geometry": { "type": "Point", "coordinates": [ -117.61688232421875, 33.41539481578252 ] } } ] } # Phu Quoc, Vietnam. # Maya Bay, Thailand.

During the 5 Gyres expedition, 48 samples were taken from a 2,424 nautical sweep. The researchers found an increase in plastic pollution density, averaging 26,898 particles per square kilometer, but spiking at up to 396,342 particles per square kilometer, peaking near the center of the predicted accumulation zone, with some estimates as high as one million particles per square kilometer. The composition of the garbage patch consists mainly of microbeads, tiny abrasives less than 5 micrometers in size usually found in certain personal hygiene products, microscopic fibers from washing clothes, fishing debris from southern hemisphere fishermen, and microscopic fragments of larger pieces which have been broken down in the ocean. The elevated levels of pollutants can be detected over a vast area estimated to be 2.6 million square kilometers (one million square miles), or about 1.5 times the size of Texas, with the debris found along a nearly 2,500 nautical mile straight line route.

Though their effects remain somewhat less well understood owing to a lack of experimental data, they have been detected in various ecological habitats far removed from industrial activity such as the Arctic, demonstrating diffusion and bioaccumulation after only a relatively brief period of widespread use. Plastic Pollution in Ghana, 2018 Plastic pollution on the remote island of Maui, Hawaii A much more recently discovered problem is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a huge concentration of plastics, chemical sludge and other debris which has been collected into a large area of the Pacific Ocean by the North Pacific Gyre. This is a less well known pollution problem than the others described above, but nonetheless has multiple and serious consequences such as increasing wildlife mortality, the spread of invasive species and human ingestion of toxic chemicals. Organizations such as 5 Gyres have researched the pollution and, along with artists like Marina DeBris, are working toward publicizing the issue.