Didn’t I hear somewhere that there was some dude who made an island out of garbage he found in the ocean? Allegedly he lived on the thing, which I imagine started off kinda small but he eventually managed to build up pretty big by grabbing any bit of floating flotsam he found, and diving under and attaching it to to island. When he would be pushed ashore by waves, he’d just hire a tugboat to pull him back out to sea.
Anybody heard of anything like this?
Yes.
Today it’s known as Staten Island.
I haven’t heard of this guy, but Jacques Custou had stated that anywhere he went in the oceans of the world, he could see garbage or oil globules in the water. This was stated towards the end of his televised shows. I can imagine that a floating island of debre in the ocean, could easly be made.
A toast to Jacques Custou to whom we owe the invention of suba gear and the preservation eforts for the waters of the world. May his son still continue the legacy, which he is.
I’ll post here if I find anything on the guy your talking about.
I haven’t heard of a floating island of garbage, but your post reminded me of a couple of things …
You might be thinking of the Principality of Sealand. Official government website: http://www.sealandgov.com/index.html About 30 years ago, Roy Bates claimed an abandoned tower 7 miles off the coast of England and set up his own government.
Or, you might be thinking of Dream Island - a giant pile of garbage in Tokyo Bay. On Earth Day 1990, 35,000 people gathered there to recycle aluminum and tin.
If you can think of any more details, post them. I’m curious.
Yes, outaedi, I have heard of the island of floating trash. I saw it on Ripley’s Believe it or not on some tv channel. Anyways the thing didn’t look like trash. It was rather nice. I know he had at least 3 cats living with him on the island and he is able to grow a fair amount of his own food. Here is a link to the page that shows a little bit about it. It’s halfway down. The guys name is Richard Sowa.
11 years ago, the publishers of National Lampoon put out a book called ‘The 90s-- A Look Back’ which was a satirical look at what was going to happen in the next 10 years. One chapter was about the discovery of a new continent made completely out of trash… Garbantis.
If this guy is real, maybe we should start taking National Lampoon more seriously. 
Here’s a link to a little more about the island created by Richard Sowa.
http://www.luf.org/wiki/view/GIG/SeaSteadTerm
No real pictures, but some interesting information.
I’m actually surprised I couldn’t find more information about it online.
There’s a small article about Dream Island here:
http://english.townpage.isp.ntt.co.jp/jtd/disc/18_tokyo/18_park.html
Looks like they’ve turned the island into a botanical park. Pretty cool.
Everything old is new again! A guy named “Cap” Streeter tried a similar stunt in 19th Century Chicago. He not only allowed but welcomed the dumping of garbage on the land he claimed, and of course the land extended further and further into the lake every year. He asserted that the limits of Chicago and Illinois were the shoreline and that his property was subject only to the federal government. The city – and the homeowners who once had a lake view but now had a “view” of a garbage dump – strongly disagreed and eventually won. Streeter, incidentally, WAS wrong, in that the border between Illinois and Indiana is down the middle of the lake, the continuation of their land border. No part of Lake Michigan, or any of the other Great Lakes, is exclusive federal territory outside state boundaries.
If the name Streeter sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because the neighborhood he built on garbage is the Streeterville area, the land north of the Chicago River and east of Michigan Avenue. The area is also called the Gold Coast, and includes some of the most expensive real estate in the world.
I think Garbage Island is where they are taping Survivor 3.