Is There More Plastic Waste In The Great Lakes Then The Oceans?

We have heard of "islands of plastic" floating in the ocean, did you know there is plastic floating in the Great lakes as well. 

Here in Michigan we are surrounded by the Great Lakes, does that mean we are surrounded by plastic Islands? First, what would an island of plastic look like? I always pictured something so dense that you could pull up to it with a boat, walk across it or at the least see it on Google Earth. That is really not the case. What it really is, is a measurement of the density of plastic particles in the water.

While it doesn't seem to be growing, the scary part is that it is turning up in the fish that are caught and sold to markets for human consumption. That's right, in our food. According to National Geographic,

Rios-Mendoza is now studying 110 fish samples to see if they have plastic debris in their guts and to learn more about the plastic pollution. She wonders whether the accidental consumption of tiny bits of plastic by fish might be a new source for toxins in the food chain.

The article also said,

The scary news was about a garbage patch discovered in the Great Lakes last year. Although scientists have studied plastic pollution in the oceans since NOAA researchers discovered the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in 1988, a team of scientists is conducting the first-of-its-kind research on the open water of the Great Lakes.

As for The Great Lakes and the plastic there, we turn to Ecowatch. They have this to say,

Plastic pollutants circulate in pockets of the Great Lakes at concentrations higher than any other body of water on Earth, according to a recent State University of New York study.

“We had two samples in Lake Erie that we just kept going back and rechecking the data, because the count, the number of plastic particles in the sample, was three times greater than any sample collected anywhere in the entire world,” SUNY chemistry professor and project lead Sherri Mason said

In the end, we are responsible for the plastic polluting our lakes and oceans and we need to make a conscious effort to recycle these items properly.

BONUS VIDEO: Paw Paw's Maple Lake in the fall of 2016