With detailed satellite imagery, why can’t we see garbage in the oceans on digital maps or on Google Earth?
In: Technology
In general Google does not buy satellite imagery of the oceans. What you see is very low resolution imagery taken from public sources. They do not show any smaller garbage as they are intended to photograph the weather and may even have a hard time seeing ships. The plastic in the ocean is quite small pieces, think shopping bags and plastic bottles. And although it is a lot of trash it is spread over huge areas. You do not get many clumps of plastic in the ocean but rather huge patches the sizes of continents with a very dispersed amount of plastic in it.
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