"Once in the ocean, plastic pollution tends to accumulate in gyres, which are large systems of rotating ocean currents. There are five major gyres: two in the Atlantic Ocean, two in the Pacific Ocean and one in the Indian Ocean. In the Pacific Ocean, the North Pacific Gyre is home to the ""Great Pacific Garbage Patch"", a large area that is approximately the size of Texas with debris extending 20 feet (6 meters) down into the water column. It's estimated that this ""plastic island"" contains 3.5 million tons of trash and could double in size in the next 5 years. In the Atlantic Ocean, the garbage patch sits hundreds of miles off the North American coast, covering a region between 22 and 38 degrees north latitude—roughly the distance from Cuba to Virginia. The Indian Ocean's garbage patch is centered roughly halfway between Africa and Australia. As with the Pacific garbage patch, plastic in both the Atlantic and Indian garbage patches can circulate in the ocean for years, posing health risks to fish, seabirds, sea turtles, and marine mammals that accidentally swallow or get entangled by the litter."
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