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Largest plastic accumulation zone in the open sea shows how waste discarded on land and in the ocean is carried by ocean currents, forming a gigantic concentration that slowly fragments into almost invisible and difficult-to-remove particles.
Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the name given to the concentration of waste that occupies an estimated area of 1.6 million km² between Hawaii and California in the Pacific Ocean, according to the organization The Ocean Cleanup.
Considered the largest plastic accumulation zone in the open sea in the world, the region gathers more than 1.8 trillion fragments and about 100 thousand tons of floating debris.
Contrary to the popular image of a compact island of trash, the patch does not form a solid and continuous surface over the sea.
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The material appears scattered in different densities, with a higher concentration in the center, making part of the pollution difficult to see with the naked eye and impossible to treat as a single block.
Responsible for maintaining this accumulation, the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre functions as a system of currents that traps floating objects in a relatively stable area.
Bottles, nets, caps, boxes, ropes, and smaller fragments can circulate for years in this environment, while they slowly degrade under the action of the sun, waves, and marine life.
What forms the garbage patch in the Pacific
In the composition of the Great Patch, most of the mass does not come from microplastics, but from objects larger than 0.5 centimeters.
The Ocean Cleanup estimates that these items represent 92% of the total mass, while microplastics account for 94% of the object count, revealing an important difference between weight and quantity.
Among the collected materials, mainly rigid plastics of polyethylene and polypropylene appear, as well as abandoned fishing gear, such as nets and ropes.
These larger debris are concerning because they continue to break into smaller particles, which then become much more difficult to remove and can be mistaken for food by marine animals.
Through rivers, according to the organization, between 1.15 million and 2.41 million tons of plastic enter the oceans every year.
After reaching the sea, the lighter and more resistant materials can travel long distances until they are pushed by converging currents, remaining on the surface or in the upper layers of the water.
Microplastics amplify the invisible threat
A seven-year survey released by The Ocean Cleanup on November 19, 2024, pointed to a significant increase in plastic fragments in the region.
The mass of small fragments rose from 2.9 kg per km² to 14.2 kg per km², while points of higher concentration increased from 1 million to more than 10 million small debris per km² between 2015 and 2022.
In the same study, the average of microplastics per km² increased from 960 thousand to 1.5 million items, and that of mesoplastics jumped from 34 thousand to 235 thousand.
This growth reinforces the urgency of removing waste still in larger sizes before fragmentation makes cleaning more complex.
Not all of the problem, however, is restricted to what floats on the surface.
The Ocean Cleanup reports that microplastics have already been found in the surface layers of the water, in the water column, and even at the bottom of the ocean, expanding the environmental reach of this pollution beyond the visible area of the patch.
Marine animals face the risk of ingestion and entanglement
For marine life, plastic poses a threat through ingestion and entanglement, especially when debris has size, color, or movement similar to natural prey.
According to The Ocean Cleanup, studies cited by the organization indicate that about 900 species have already had contact with marine debris, and 92% of these interactions involved plastic.
Among the most dangerous debris are abandoned fishing nets, known as ghost nets, because they continue to capture animals at sea.
In the Great Patch, the organization estimates that nets represent 46% of the total mass, a fact that helps explain the risk to turtles, birds, fish, and marine mammals.
Another sign of imbalance appears on the very surface of the region, where the concentration of floating plastic is 180 times greater than that of marine life in the analyzed area.
With smaller particles mixed with the available food, the chance of accidental ingestion increases for species that cross or inhabit the contaminated zone.
Cleaning the Great Patch still depends on reducing disposal
To remove waste from ocean gyres, The Ocean Cleanup claims that it already operates collection systems in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch with System 03.
Even with technology in operation, the scale of the problem requires mapping, efficiency in collections, and continuous reduction of new waste entering the sea.
Removing the accumulated waste solves only part of the crisis, as the constant flow of plastic from rivers and maritime activities keeps the patch in renewal.
Without reducing disposal, monitoring pollution sources, and recovering waste before fragmentation, the contaminated area tends to produce increasingly smaller particles.
In the Pacific, the garbage patch reveals a contradiction hard to ignore: waste discarded by societies on land ends up concentrated in a remote region that almost no one sees.
If an area larger than France is still not enough to change habits, public policies, and enforcement, what size will be necessary to treat the ocean as a priority?
