A group of scientists is sailing out to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to study the mass of floating plastic trash that could be twice the size of Texas, The San Jose Mercury Newsreports.
The debris is located about 1,000 miles west of California and includes everything from old fishing lines to plastic bottles.
"This is a problem that is kind of out of sight, out of mind, but it is having devastating impacts on the ocean. I felt we needed to do something about it," Mary Crowley, co-founder of Project Kaisei, tells the paper.
Project Kaisei is a non-profit expedition that is partnering on the voyage with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
There appears to be little that anyone can do to clean it up. That's largely because most of the plastic has broken into tiny fragments and simply floats on the surface like confetti, shifting with the season and the currents, the Mercury News reports.
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography says that while the garbage patch has received popular media attention, there is little scientific information on the composition, extent, and effects of the debris.
You can follow the two-week voyage of the research vessel, the New Horizon, by clicking here for the SIP website.
(Photo of training aboard the New Horizon by SIO, Reuters)
Doug is an unrepentant news junkie who loves breaking news and has been known to watch C-SPAN even on vacation. He has covered a wide range of domestic and international news stories, from prison riots in Oklahoma to the Moscow coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. Doug previously served as foreign editor at USA TODAY. More about Doug
Michael Winter has been a daily contributor to On Deadline since its debut in January 2006. His journalism career began in the prehistoric Ink Era, and he was an early adapter at the dawn of the Digital Age. His varied experience includes editing at the San Jose Mercury News and The Philadelphia Inquirer.