Chapter 1 · Try it yourself

Gyre Collector

Nobody dumps trash in the middle of the North Pacific on purpose. The ocean delivers it. Pick where a batch of floating debris starts, run the clock, and see where the currents take it.

1. Release floating debris from

2. Years since release0.0 years

From Japan
From California
From Hawaii
From the fishing fleet
Washed ashore
Main currents
Orange shading: more debris; dashed box: the patch

Simplified outlines, not to scale. Each mark stands for a lot of debris.

Inside the patch box
0%

Years since release0.0
Elsewhere at sea100%
Washed ashore0%
Drifted out of the gyre0%

In the real patch, the debris is spread thin and mostly tiny. About 94% of its estimated 1.8 trillion pieces are microplastics smaller than 5 mm, yet they make up only about 8% of its roughly 79,000 tonnes. You could sail through it and see almost nothing.

Simplified model. Pieces ride a made-up, textbook-style gyre: a clockwise swirl that is fast and narrow along Japan and slow and broad elsewhere, plus a gentle push toward the middle standing in for Ekman convergence, plus random eddies. It is not a forecast, and real debris also feels the wind and sinks or breaks apart. The dashed box is about 1,700,000 km² around 32°N, 145°W, near the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in Lebreton and others (2018): about 1.6 million km², 79,000 tonnes (range 45,000–129,000), and 1.8 trillion pieces, with at least 46% of the mass in fishing nets.