Garbage Patches and Gyres

Contrary to the term garbage "patch" used to describe this phenomenon, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not just a patch of garbage floating around in the Pacific Ocean. You might picture this garbage patch to be plastic bottles and other large pieces of plastic floating around, forming something like an island. That is not at all true! Although there are pieces of large plastic floating in the patch, it is mostly made up of tiny pieces plastic called micro-plastics that are usually around 5mm in size. These micro-plastics account for around 70% of the plastic in the ocean. This is due to the breakdown of the larger plastics via wave action and photo degradation. So therefore you can pass through a garbage patch in a vessel and not even know it.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is also not the only garbage patch in the ocean. Garbage patches form in the ocean due to slow moving circular currents called gyres. These gyres cause garbage to accumulate in high densities within it. There are five major gyres that can  be found in the world's oceans. They are the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic and the Indian subtropical gyres. Also, gyres are not the places in the ocean that garbage can be found however, they are just found here in higher densities that in other regions.