Chapter 7 · Try it yourself

Whose Water?

Near the coast, the sea belongs to the country next to it. Farther out, it slowly stops belonging to anyone. Move things around the ocean below and see whose rules follow them, and why the garbage patch sits in exactly the part of the sea where nobody is in charge.

Part 1: From the beach to the high seas

1. Pick something

2. Move it to

Ocean zones.

Not to scale: the high seas stretch for thousands of nautical miles. Zones are measured from the baseline, usually the low-tide line along the coast. 1 nautical mile (nm) = 1.852 km.

The garbage patch in the high seas

Whose rules

Agreements that matter here

In plain words

Why nobody cleans up the patch

Nearly two-thirds of the ocean’s surface is high seas. The patch sits almost entirely out there, between Hawaii and California, well beyond any country’s 200-nautical-mile zone.

Its plastic comes from many countries: a large share from fishing fleets (lost nets, lines, crates), the rest from land and ships, and it drifted for years to get there. No law says who must clean it up, and the plastic keeps arriving. That is why many scientists argue the most important rules are the ones that stop plastic at the source.

Part 2: A short history of ocean rules

Entries marked “Relevant now” apply to what you picked.

    Simplified: real rules are more complicated. Zones follow the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS, adopted 1982, in force 1994); the United States has not joined UNCLOS but recognizes these zones. Where countries’ zones overlap, they negotiate boundaries. MARPOL Annex V (in force 31 December 1988, revised version in force 1 January 2013) applies to all ships and bans discharging plastics anywhere at sea. The High Seas Treaty, formally the BBNJ Agreement, was adopted in June 2023 and entered into force on 17 January 2026. Global plastics treaty: talks began in 2022; sessions in Busan (2024) and Geneva (August 2025) ended without agreement, and as of September 2026 negotiations are still continuing with no treaty agreed. Sources: UN, IMO, UNEP, European Commission.