Have even taken a drone to capture images from the sky
Have found 7 ton island made of bouys from 2011 tsunami
Overall area believed to be as big as Texas
A 2014 study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the ocean’s plastic may be mysteriously disappearing, with much less debris in the water than had been predicted, based on the global rates of plastic production and disposal.
On his current trip, Moore did a similar 4.5-mile (7.2 kilometer) trawl of the ocean, but also used drones to assess the extent of trash from above.
The sample from the one hour trawl produced an alarming amount of plastics.
Captain Moore said ‘this is extremely disturbing to me that 260 miles from the center of the gyre we pull a sample that appears to be a thousands of times more plastic by weight than plankton.
‘This is worse than the samples I was getting five years ago out in the center of the garbage patch, and we’re still on the periphery.
‘We found 100 times more plastic by weight with the drone, than we estimated from the trawl,’ Moore told Livescience.
They also say debris from the Japanese 2011 Tsunami is created its own ‘mini islands’.
The team has already found one, dubbed ‘bouy Island’, that they believe weights 7 tons.
Capt. Charles Moore: …the ocean is downhill from everywhere…
THE JOLLY BUCCANEERS 