What is the garbage patch?
Most people refer to the Great Pacific Ocean Gyre were different streams come together in a vortex. Once garbage is in the Gyre it stays here as a trash vortex or soup of plastic. Actually most plastic parts have become so smart that they are hardly visible for the naked eye. Unfortunately this is not the only place. There is hardly media attention for other places like the North Atlantic Garbage Patch which is in terms of pollution more or less similar. In total there are five major gyres.
Where is the Great Pacific garbage patch or where are these garbage islands?
The first discovered and most known garbage patch is located between California and Japan in the pacific ocean. Actually most of the garbage is floating a few feet under the ocean surface.
The Midway islands are the closed islands to the Great Pacific Ocean Gyre. One island is located in below map.
When was the first garbage patch discovered?
In 1972 the North Atlantic Garbage Patch was documented by E.J. Carpenter, and K.L. Smith Jr.
In 1988 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), part of the U.S. department of commerce. Based on research and measurements between 1985 and 1988.
Garbage patch and garbage islands are terms invented in the media. Although it size is huge it is not a landfill or anything very visible as you might think the first time. The correct word would be marine debris. I would simply say plastic pollution because the real problem is the long lasting property of plastic. This is key for the solution because once plastic becomes a biodegradable product, which can be done today, there will be no place in the world where ever lasting waste can be collected.