Did you know there was a massive section of sea floor in the Pacific Ocean that is literally covered with miles and miles of trash? Until today, I had never heard of the The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Apparently, this accumulation of garbage is as large as a continent and contains garbage from all over the world.

Due to the currents in the oceans, trash is gathered in certain accumulation zones. One of the strongest areas of accumulation is this patch in the Pacific. Unfortunately, a lot of the garbage that accumulates here is made of plastic. And plastic, as we know, is very hard to break down. Actually, I believe I heard that it was chemically impossible to break it down via natural methods (erosion, etc). Since the chemical bonds don't break, all these processes can do is break the plastic item into smaller pieces of plastic. These pieces will often wash ashore on beaches, and in some cases, cover a beach with tiny, multi-colored pieces of plastic.

It's unfortunate that we have this amount of garbage in our oceans. And it's sad to think that a large portion of it was probably dumped in the ocean on purpose. Too bad we don't think ahead before doing things like this.