Vernian obscura et Trivia et footnotes 8
Quentin R. Skrabec Ph.D.
Verne’s Sargasso Sea
In 1871, Jules Verne made the Sargasso Sea famous by devoting an entire chapter to it in 20000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Sargasso Sea is a region of the Atlantic Ocean bounded by four currents forming a calm circular sea; Verne called it a “lake within an ocean.” Unlike all other regions called seas, it has no land boundaries. The sea is bounded on the west by the Gulf Stream, on the north by the North Atlantic Current, on the east by the Canary Current, and on the south by the North Atlantic Equatorial Current, the four together forming a clockwise-circulating system of ocean currents about 600 nautical miles wide. It is distinguished from other parts of the Atlantic Ocean by its characteristic brown Sargassum seaweed, which Columbus had detailed and Verne added to the description. However, it is only in this century that the Sargasso Sea has gained international acceptance and extensive study.
Verne’s description augurs what scientists have only recently discovered, classifying it as one of five oceanic garbage dumps. Verne noted the phenomenon: "the Atlantic is the vase, the Gulf Stream the circular current, and the Sargasso Sea the central point at which the floating bodies unite.” Verne further described the collected garbage, “trunks of trees torn from the Andes or the Rocky Mountains and floated by the Amazon or the Mississippi; numerous wrecks, remains of keels, or ships’ bottoms, side-planks stove in, and so weighted with shells and barnacles that they could not again rise to the surface.”
Today, Greenpeace scientists say they found “extreme” concentrations of microplastic pollution in the Sargasso Sea. Verne’s debris was biodegradable wood, which Verne even suggested: “that these substances thus accumulated for ages will become petrified by the action of the water and will then form inexhaustible coal-mines.” Today, plastics can last for thousands of years, only gradually wearing down to small pieces and never biodegrading completely. Greenpeace notes that this debris “ can be ingested by a wide range of organisms and can accumulate up the food chain. They can also absorb and concentrate other pollutants, like pesticides and heavy metals, increasing their potential harm.”