![]() A plastic cigarette lighter cast out to sea will fragment into smaller and smaller pieces of plastic without breaking into simpler compounds, which scientists estimate could take hundreds of years. (Experts point out that the durability that makes plastic so useful to humans also makes it quite harmful to nature.) Instead, plastic photodegrades. The main problem with plastic - besides there being so much of it - is that it doesn't biodegrade. Research flights showed that significant amounts of trash also accumulate in the Convergence Zone. The patches are connected by a thin 6,000-mile long current called the Subtropical Convergence Zone. Each swirling mass of refuse is massive and collects trash from all over the world. The Western Garbage Patch forms east of Japan and west of Hawaii. The Eastern Garbage Patch floats between Hawaii and California scientists estimate its size as two times bigger than Texas. The gyre has actually given birth to two large masses of ever-accumulating trash, known as the Western and Eastern Pacific Garbage Patches, sometimes collectively called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. It's the largest landfill in the world, and it floats in the middle of the ocean. But the area is filled with something besides plankton: trash, millions of pounds of it, most of it plastic. Due to its lack of large fish and gentle breezes, fishermen and sailors rarely travel through the gyre. The area is an oceanic desert, filled with tiny phytoplankton but few big fish or mammals. In the broad expanse of the northern Pacific Ocean, there exists the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, a slowly moving, clockwise spiral of currents created by a high-pressure system of air currents. Image courtesy Algalita Marine Research Foundation
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