According to a three-year study published in Scientific Reports Friday, the mass known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is about 1.6 million square kilometers in size -- up to 16 times bigger than previous estimates.
Ghost nets, or discarded fishing nets, make up almost half the 80,000 metric tons of garbage floating at sea, and researchers believe that around 20% of the total volume of trash is debris from the 2011
Japanese tsunami.
The study -- conducted by an international team of scientists with The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, six universities and an aerial sensor company -- utilized two aircraft surveys and 30 vessels to cross the debris field.
Along with nets to survey and collect trash, researchers used two six-meter-wide devices to measure medium to large-sized objects. An aircraft was also fitted with advanced sensors to collect 3D scans of the ocean garbage. They ended up collecting a total of 1.2 million plastic samples and scanned more than 300 square kilometers of ocean surface.
The bulk of the pile is made up of larger objects while only 8% of the mass is microplastics, or pieces smaller than 5 millimeters in size.
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"We were surprised by the amount of large plastic objects we encountered," Chief Scientist Julia Reisser said in a statement.
"We were surprised by the amount of large plastic objects we encountered," Chief Scientist Julia Reisser said in a statement.
"We used to think most of the debris consists of small fragments, but this new analysis shines a new light on the scope of the debris.
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