When I tell people about the 'Great Pacific Garbage Pile' they are often surprised to hear that the '8th continent' on our planet consists of nearly 4 million tons of plastics floating in the Pacific Ocean in an area double the size of Texas!
A 100-fold upsurge in human-produced plastic garbage in the ocean is altering habitats in the marine environment, according to a new study led by a graduate student researcher at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.
The new study follows a report published last year by Scripps researchers in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series showing that nine percent of the fish collected during SEAPLEX contained plastic waste in their stomachs. That study estimated that fish in the intermediate ocean depths of the North Pacific Ocean ingest plastic at a rate of roughly 12,000 to 24,000 tons per year.
See the article: Plastic trash altering ocean habitats
