https://eos.org/articles/below-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-more-garbage Source:   By Mara Johnson-Groh, Eos/AGU.  Excerpt: ...“We have a very limited understanding of where all the plastic and stuff that’s being put into the ocean ends up,” said Matthias Egger, the lead scientist behind the new study and a researcher with The Ocean Cleanup. “We know roughly there’s tens of millions of tons of plastics going into the ocean. A large part of that should be afloat, but it’s not.” This mystery is known as the missing plastic problem. Plastic found adrift in the ocean makes up only 1% of what should be out there, though a large portion is thought to circulate in coastal environments. The largest known reservoirs of plastic at sea are giant, swirling “garbage patches” that can stretch over areas twice the size of Texas. Could some of the missing plastic have sunk beneath these massive gyres? ...The scientists estimated that between 5 and 2,000 meters below the surface, the tota...

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/09/science/ocean-cleanup-great-pacific-garbage-patch.html Source:   By Christina Caron, The New York Times. Excerpt: A multimillion-dollar floating boom designed to corral plastic debris littering the Pacific Ocean deployed from San Francisco Bay on Saturday as part of a larger high-stakes and ambitious undertaking. The 2,000-foot-long unmanned structure was the product of about $20 million in funding from the Ocean Cleanup, a nonprofit that aims to trap up to 150,000 pounds of plastic during the boom’s first year at sea. Within five years, with the creation of dozens more booms, the organization hopes to clean half of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The patch, a gyre of trash between California and Hawaii, comprises an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of scattered detritus, including at least 87,000 tons of plastic....  See also: Controversial plastic trash collector begins maiden ocean voyage (Science Magazine)  

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 seve...