Scientists have found thriving communities of coastal creatures, including tiny crabs and anemones, living thousands of miles from their original home on plastic debris in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a 620,000 square mile swirl of trash in the ocean between California and Hawaii.
Since it first emerged with the bold vision of cleaning plastics from the seas way back in 2013, the Ocean Cleanup Project has made many tweaks to the design of its trash-catching barriers.
Over the course of 48 days, an expedition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch managed to haul an astonishing 103 tons of plastic from the ocean. The mission was run by Ocean Voyages Institute, a non-profit founded in 1979 to help preserve the world’s oceans.