Largest oceanic "garbage patch"

The North Pacific Central Gyre is a vast vortex of slowly revolving ocean water with a clockwise current, where floating marine debris naturally converges at its centre, resulting in its unenviable nickname of the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch". With no fixed boundaries, varying densities of litter and the fact that the majority of the debris found there is microplastic (i.e., <5 mm in diameter), its total size is debated, but conservatively it has been estimated to cover an area of at least 700,000 km2 (270,000 sq mi) - about the same size as the US state of Texas - though others have suggested it could be double that, or even higher. Sampling for neustonic (near-surface) plastic in the North Pacific Central Gyre in August 1999 logged 334,271 plastic pieces per km2, with a combined weight of 5.114 kg (11 lb 4.4 oz) per km2, as reported in Marine Pollution Bulletin in December 2001. In quantity, natural plankton in the samples was five times higher, but in terms of mass the plastic weighed around six times greater, so for every 1 kg (2 lb 2 oz) of natural plankton there was approximately 6 kg (13 lb) of waste plastic.