A lot of folks over on Digg were very skeptical of the existence
of the North Pacific Trash Gyre. They want to know: why are
there no photos of floating heaps of trash? Why can’t you see
the giant trash island the size of Texas on Google Earth? When I
learned of the trash gyre, I was equally skeptical, due to
common misconceptions that get perpetuated in mainstream media
articles. The most common misconception is that the trash pile
is like an island, or a dense pile like this one in San Diego
Harbor. It’s not packed in as tight as that – it’s more like a
dense collection of tiny floating pieces of plastic, most of
which are not on the surface. A big container ship or naval
vessel going through there would probably not notice much out of
the ordinary – after all, there is some degree of plastic trash
floating on the surface all over the world. To really get a
sense of how much plastic is in there, you have to do a trawl,
which entails dragging a net with a bucket on the end behind
your boat. Here’s a photo of