Cleanup efforts are ongoing to remove plastic and other waste from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, also called the Pacific trash vortex, consists of a vast area of floating marine debris from humans.
MIT researchers have found that eddies at the edges of subtropical ocean gyres deliver nutrients that sustain the phytoplankton within the gyres. The findings answer a longstanding question about how these microbes are able to survive.
After a 45-day trip out to the North Pacific Gyre, often referred to as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the crew from the Ocean Voyages Institute pulled 96 tons of trash out of the water.