Plastic accumulates in gyres, or ocean vortexes, because it's so lightweight and long-lasting. It shoots into the ocean as storm-drain runoff or starts off there as fishing nets or buoys come loose and gradually make their way into a gyre. A lot of it winds up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. But it's likely that the Pacific patch isn't the only gyre-bound refuse pile dirtying up Earth's oceans. According to the New York Times, five such patches may exist -- we just have to find them.
It's hard to believe that something now about twice the size of Texas could have been stumbled upon by accident, but that's exactly what happened with the Pacific patch's eastern mass. Twelve years ago, Charles Moore found the then much smaller trail of garbage after a Hawaiian sailing race. The find drove him to study such flotsam and launch subsequent expeditions to the gyre. He now believes other patches are out there, noting, "Anywhere you really look for it, you're going to see it."
But why is it hard to find these colossal clusters of plastic? Why don't they show up on satellite images? Because their contents are tiny -- little shards of plastic, like confetti suspended in water. Swirl a few million such particles in a gyre and you have a garbage patch: destructive, dangerous and the size of a loosely packed land mass.
Image: Plastic and other rubbish washes ashore in Prestwick, Scotland. (Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
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