What is "Plastic Soup"? and what is it doing in the ocean?

The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" was discovered about 10 years ago by Charles Moore. Moore is the founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation (AMRF).
ABC's Nightline aired a piece this past Christmas week featuring him called Disposable Island.


I heard about these massive long "garbage patches" of trash that move with the ocean currents in the Pacific Ocean a few years ago. This "soup" does wash up on shores all across the Pacific and leaves trails that can be miles long of plastic syringes, toothbrushes, Styrofoam coolers and everything else under the sun. I wanted to throw-up then as I did watching a recent PBS news program where I saw birds and marine life devastated by eating this stuff that they cannot get out of their system. PBS News Hour:with Jim Lehrer, reported Thursday, November 13, 2008, about this international human waste problem and the scientists who are finding out where it is coming from, how is it affecting marine life, and what can be done to clean it up.
CHARLES MOORE, Ocean Researcher says:

I think it's fair to say that the phenomena exists from just off the coast of China all the way to a few hundred miles from the coast of California. It's at least one-and-a-half times the size of the United States, approximately 5 million square miles . .

Another reason to cut back on ALL plastics and non-recycleables all around.
What do you think you know about plastic pollution? Take the Plastic recycling Quiz at PBS.