"Great Pacific Garbage Patch"

A research vessel has set out from California's Scripps Institution of Oceanography to explore The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The expedition will study how much debris -- mostly tiny plastic fragments -- is collecting in an expanse of sea known as the North Pacific Ocean Gyre, how that material is distributed and how it affects marine life.

The debris ends up concentrated by circular, clockwise ocean currents within an oblong-shaped "convergence zone" hundreds of miles across from end to end near the Hawaiian Islands, about midway between Japan and the West Coast of the United States.

There is a similar confluence of plastics in the Atlantic as well.