Gyres are not particular to
Lewis Carroll's Looking-Glass world. If you want to encounter one without stepping into a
mirror and perhaps bleeding to death from all the nasty cuts you would incur, all you have to do is go out into the ocean. Along the eastern coast of North America and spanning all the way across to
Europe and north
Africa is the
North Atlantic gyre. Then there's the
South Atlantic gyre (
Africa to
South America), the
Indian Ocean gyre (west coast of Africa to
Australia), and the two huge Pacific gyres,
north and
south (they stretch from
Asia and
Oceania to the Americas). Their motion, unlike the flush of toilet water down the drain, is dictated by the
Coriolis effect.
Gyres are caused by the continents binding ocean currents into perpetually swirling patterns along the ocean basins. The centrals gyres which line the equator (South Atlantic and South Pacific) are centered over tropical high pressure zones, further fueling their motion.