Have you heard of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? It's a gyre of plastic debris in the north-central Pacific Ocean — the largest accumulation of plastic in the world. In fact, the oceans are so overwhelmed with plastic pollution that if the Great Pacific garbage patch were a country, it would be the 19th largest in the world. Check out our interactive map to see how it measures up to other places for yourself: https://biodiv.us/3SMFWSs | Center for Biological Diversity

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not an island of trash; it resembles a plastic soup, with areas of higher plastic concentration (hotspots) spread over an estimated surface area of 1.6 million square kilometers—three times the size of France. To improve the efficiency of our cleanup operations and address the urgency of the plastic pollution problem in the GPGP, this year we are developing methods to use GPS trackers and drones to locate plastic hotspots in real time. These innovations will he