The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a litter island. The affected area has a high concentration of litter items that are often too small to see with the naked eye. All together they weight an estimated 80,000 tonnes – or 500 Jumbo Jets. Nearly half of the litter is made up of discarded fishing nets.
Plastic in the ocean does not only pollute one of the most important living spaces of our planet it is also a grave danger to marine animals. Fish for example often mistake plastic particles with nutrition and eat it. Therefore, plastic also enters the human food chain when people eat fish.