North Pacific Ocean Gyre

Out in the middle of the northern Pacific Ocean, a giant floating mess of plastic debris is drifting and bobbing among the waves. Scientists call this expanse of litter, which stretches for hundreds of kilometers across open sea, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But before last summer, there was little information about how large the patch really is, what types of debris are out there and what kind of impact it is having on ocean life.

In August, a team of about 30 marine scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., set sail to investigate the patch on a mission called SEAPLEX (Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition). During the research trip, which lasted 20 days, the team got a closer look at the debris:
The plastic has been collecting in a part of the sea near the Hawaiian Islands, about midway between Japan and North America, known as the North Pacific Ocean Gyre.

One glaring question is where the debris comes from — but it’s very likely an international problem, Goldstein said. “We saw trash with different writing, both from North America and Asia.