Last March I wrote a little about the North Pacific Gyre and the amount of plastic that was floating out in the ocean (killing Albatrosses and lots of other creatures) being roughly equal to the size of the state of Texas. Tonight, while perusing the posts over a Daily Kos, I found this diary about some recent news from the Pacific. Turns out the amount of plastic is in an area much larger - an area something like twice the size of the United States. There's a research vessel out there now scooping this stuff up and it is pretty astonishing.

The crew of the Alguita is maintaining a blog to talk about what they are finding and they also take time to respond to some of the comments:

Paul S. asked, “Do you mean to say you trawl an area approximately 3 feet wide, 6 miles long, and come up with only 1/3 of an ounce of plastic?” We all chatted a bit about this during dinner – and may comment further in the coming weeks. For now, here’s a response from Marcus: “10 grams per 6 nautical mile trawl is a subjective estimate based on years trawling in and out of the North Pacific Gyre, near and far from shore. This is a rough estimate that might not seem like much, but you’ve got to consider the size of our playing field. Our trawl is three feet wide. A six nautical mile trawl covers a little less than two football fields. We’re studying an area between latitudes 20 and 40, and longitudes 130 and 170, which is approximately 2.5 million square nautical miles, representing only a quarter of the North Pacific. Still, that covers almost 3 billion football fields (2,929,900,000). SO, if we’re averaging 10 grams for every two football fields of area, then in 1/4 of the Pacific we think there could be 14 -1/2 MILLION metric tons of plastic marine debris. “

They also show pictures of some of the items they retrieve - it is really worth a look.

The diary on DailyKos also linked to an article in the U.K newspaper The Independent about the research titled The world's rubbish dump: a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan:

According to the UN Environment Programme, plastic debris causes the deaths of more than a million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals. Syringes, cigarette lighters and toothbrushes have been found inside the stomachs of dead seabirds, which mistake them for food.

Plastic is believed to constitute 90 per cent of all rubbish floating in the oceans. The UN Environment Programme estimated in 2006 that every square mile of ocean contains 46,000 pieces of floating plastic.

'Tis a scary world we are living in today.