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In the middle of the Northern Pacific Ocean, there is a swirling vortex of ocean currents, the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Although boundaries change, it stretches about 500 nautical miles off the coast of California, across the northern Pacific, to near the coast of Japan.

Few big fish or mammals live in this oceanic desert. There is some phytoplankton in this oceanic desert. There is also an enormous mass of detritus besides.

Charles Moore (seen in these photographs) who began investigating this flotsam in 1997, says almost all of it is plastic