See What Lurks in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (Photos)

See the pollution scientists are worried about, then see which ocean advocate will win a Heart of Green award.

By Lindsey Hoshaw

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fish, trigger, garbage, plastics, litter, trash, great pacific garbage patch, oceans, pollution trigger fish living in a plastic caulking tube in great pacific garbage patch A spotted gray trigger fish was just big enough to fit inside a caulking tube, and became highly protective of its tiny habitat, snapping at approaching fish. Captain Moore removed the tube from the garbage patch and placed it in an aquarium for observation. Even after hours in the tank, the trigger fish refused to leave the tube and we thought it was stuck until it swam to the front of the tube to snap at the other fish.

Fishing Expedition

bill cooper, trash, plastics, oceans, pollution, litter, great pacific garbage patch bill cooper fishes out a plastic drum from the great pacific garbage patch Bill Cooper, a crew member aboard the research vessel Alguita, was on deck just in time to catch a large plastic container floating by the ship. The label had a warning that said corrosive rust stain remover, but all we found inside was seawater. Because the color of the plastic hadn't started to fade it may have been in the water only a few months or weeks -- but there was no way to know for sure.

The Mother of All Tangles

rope, litter, trash, garbage, junk, great pacific garbage patch, pollution, oceans giant tangle of rope in great pacific garbage patch This 200-pound tangle of rope was the most unbelievable thing we found -- well maybe aside from the intact light bulb and toilet seat we saw. Captain Moore explained that ropes, drift nets and fishing line have a way of finding one another in the open ocean and proceed to glom together. This particular tangle had at least twenty different reef fish living underneath it and inside was at least fifty crabs. It took tremendous effort to pull the enormous mound of trash on board and for weeks afterward crabs were still crawling out of the center.

Plastic Plankton

toothbrush, plastics, pollution, garbage, litter, great pacific garbage patch, oceans, junk plastic junk caught in the great pacific garbage patch After dragging a large net behind the ship for an hour this is what we came up with -- a toothbrush, a chunk of rope, the top of a plastic bottle and black circle that looked like a lens cap. And amid all these big pieces of plastic were tiny fragments -- hundreds of them. There were more pieces of plastic in the sample than living organisms.

Water Bottles Everywhere

great pacific garbage patch, oceans, trash, litter, water bottles, plastics, moore, pollution captain moore holds up a water bottle from the great pacific garbage patch From the bow of the ship, Captain Moore caught a large plastic bottle covered with barnacles and algae. Because plastic water bottles are an inexpensive and omnipresent product worldwide they were a common sight in the garbage patch. Some bottles had words written in English or Chinese on them but this clear bottle gave us no indication of where it came from.

Plastic Soup

plastics, pollution, trash, litter, oceans, great pacific garbage patch plastic particles in dish, collected from great pacific garbage patch

Bottle caps, toothbrushes, umbrella handles, Popsicle sticks and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice were a common sight in the Pacific garbage patch. This sample of ocean water shows the prevalence of trash in the ocean and disproves the notion of the patch as a floating oceanic landfill. It's much more like a plastic soup with tiny pieces that, from a distance -- like the bow of a ship -- are barely discernible to the naked eye.

Lindsey Hoshaw's trip to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch was largely underwritten by crowd-funding through Spot.Us