Researchers: Pacific trash possibly killing fish

SAN DIEGO — Researchers say a Texas-sized garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean is possibly killing marine life and birds that are ingesting the trash.

Scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography on Thursday announced findings from an August expedition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, about 1,000 miles west of California. The patch is a vortex formed by ocean currents and collects human-produced trash.

Among researchers' findings were confetti-like plastic shards and barnacles clinging to water bottles. The scientists say they will analyze the trash to determine the density of the patch and its consequences for sea creatures.

They worry marine life is dying from ingesting plastic, which does not biodegrade but breaks into small pieces.

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Mankind is polluting the oceans with plastic...

In the middle of the Pacific Ocean is a floating garbage dump the size of Africa. Its scientific name is the Pacific central gyre, but it's better known as the Pacific garbage patch - 25 million square kilometres of flotsam pushed along by a spiralling current into the centre of the world's largest ocean. Anything that floats ends up there, and most of it is plastic.

It can take up to a dozen years for debris dumped or washed into the sea to reach the gyre, and during that time natural products break down. But plastic does not, and the result is a raft of plastic waste the size of a continent.

In a recent voyage to the centre of the patch, the oceanographic research vessel Alguita found sea creatures tangled in discarded plastic fishing line and netting or with plastic fragments in their bellies.