Great Pacific Garbage Patch is now nearly 4 times the size of California
https://www.sfchronicle.com/nation/article/Huge-garbage-sprawl-in-Pacific-ocean-is-much-12773818.php
Source: By Peter Fimrite, San Francisco Chronicle. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7. Excerpt: The giant mass of floating plastic that has imperiled birds and wildlife between San Francisco and Hawaii contains 1.8 trillion pieces of trash covering an area nearly four times the size of California — significantly bigger than previously thought — and it is growing, a study published Thursday concluded. A team of scientists from the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, based in the Netherlands, said the debris field, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, covers about 618,000 square miles of deep ocean and weighs 80,000 metric tons. It is the largest accumulation of ocean plastics on Earth, and a serious threat to both marine animals and people, according to the three-year mapping study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. That’s because eating plastic, which contains several harmful chemicals, can be toxic, so the birds and fish that eat it and the humans who in turn eat them can suffer health problems. It is a particularly difficult problem to stop because the discarded plastic collects algae that smells to birds like seafood, according to a 2016 UC Davis study. Other studies have shown that as many as 90 percent of seabirds have plastic in their guts.... See also https://eos.org/articles/pacifics-garbage-hot-spot-holds-more-plastic-debris-than-was-thought
Source: By Peter Fimrite, San Francisco Chronicle. For GSS Ecosystem Change chapter 7. Excerpt: The giant mass of floating plastic that has imperiled birds and wildlife between San Francisco and Hawaii contains 1.8 trillion pieces of trash covering an area nearly four times the size of California — significantly bigger than previously thought — and it is growing, a study published Thursday concluded. A team of scientists from the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, based in the Netherlands, said the debris field, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, covers about 618,000 square miles of deep ocean and weighs 80,000 metric tons. It is the largest accumulation of ocean plastics on Earth, and a serious threat to both marine animals and people, according to the three-year mapping study published Thursday in the journal Scientific Reports. That’s because eating plastic, which contains several harmful chemicals, can be toxic, so the birds and fish that eat it and the humans who in turn eat them can suffer health problems. It is a particularly difficult problem to stop because the discarded plastic collects algae that smells to birds like seafood, according to a 2016 UC Davis study. Other studies have shown that as many as 90 percent of seabirds have plastic in their guts.... See also https://eos.org/articles/pacifics-garbage-hot-spot-holds-more-plastic-debris-than-was-thought