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Short Wave

These Critters Call The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Home

Short Wave

NPR

Daily News, Nature, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science, News

4.76K Ratings

🗓️ 14 July 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

For this second installment of the Sea Camp series, we explore the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It's the largest of five gigantic garbage patches in the sea. These patches hang out at the nexus of the world's ocean currents, changing shape with the waves. These areas were long thought to have been uninhabited, the plastics and fishing gear too harmful to marine life. But researchers have uncovered a whole ecosystem of life in this largest collection of trash. Today, with the help of marine biologist Fiona Chong, we meet the tiny marine life that calls this place home.

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Transcript

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0:00.0

The House of Representatives has approved a White House request to claw back two years of previously approved funding for public media.

0:08.0

The recisions package now moves on to the Senate.

0:11.2

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0:16.6

Please take a stand for public media today at goacpr.org.

0:22.6

Thank you.

0:24.4

You're listening to Shortwave.

0:27.2

From NPR.

0:29.6

Hey, surewaivers, it's Regina Barber.

0:31.8

And Emily Kwong, back with our second episode in our summer series, Seacamp.

0:36.4

Okay, M.

0:37.4

Last week, we talked with our producer Hannah Chin about the interface of air and water.

0:42.2

What do we have for today?

0:43.5

Like, where are we going?

0:44.4

We're staying in the same place.

0:45.6

We're just going to linger at the surface of the ocean a bit longer.

0:48.3

But I wanted to visit one very famous type of ecosystem full of biodiversity and richness. Okay, where is that? I am talking

0:56.8

about a garbage patch. Trash as far as the eye can see. Garbage, floating for miles in the ocean.

1:07.2

It's an image you've probably seen pictures of affixed to an article about ocean pollution or climate change. It's an image you've probably seen pictures of, affixed to an article about ocean pollution or climate change.

1:14.5

It's an image most people turn away from, but not marine biologist Fiona Chong.

1:19.4

A garbage patch is a floating collection of plastic debris that came from land but has ended up in the oceans. And

1:32.6

the plastic debris and the trash is carried there from land into the oceans by wind and ocean

1:41.5

currents. And they kind of congregate there and they swell around.

...

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