The researchers and volunteers who were gathering data on the amount of plastic garbage that floats in the Pacific Ocean are back from their month-long "mega expedition" on Sunday, Aug.23.

Members of the 30-boat expedition measured the size and mapped the location of plastic waste in the so-called Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a mass of plastic debris that floats between America's West Coast and Hawaii. The patch, which was discovered by Charles Moore in 1997, is estimated to be twice the size of Texas.

The volunteer crews found that the plastic waste at the site is mostly medium- to large-sized clumps and not tiny ones.

The expedition, which will end next month, aims to collect more extensive data compared with what has been gathered over the past 40 years. The volunteers use GPS and a smartphone app to look for plastic items, record them and then ship the samples to the Netherlands to be counted and recorded.

The 171-foot mother ship brought back some of the plastic waste from the garbage patch and the haul included fishing nets, buoys, toys, toothbrushes, buckets and bottles.

Boyan Slat, 21, from the Netherlands, who founded the organization Ocean Cleanup that sponsored the expedition, said that the discovery provided proof why there should be urgency in efforts to clean up.

Sunlight and tiny organisms that consume hydrocarbon can turn big plastic chunks into smaller bits that would make them very difficult to retrieve.

"If we don't clean it up soon, then we'll give the big plastic time to break into smaller and smaller pieces," said Slat. "Based on what we've seen out there, the only way to describe the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is a ticking time bomb."

Slat has developed a technology that he claims could start removing the garbage five years from now. Citing a feasibility study that showed half of the patch could be cleaned up in just a decade, he said that the survey expedition is the first step toward the effort that he hopes will start in 2020.

The university dropout has been developing the technology that will be tested starting next year. Slat has envisioned using long-distance floating barriers that are anchored to the sea bed and will extend in a V-shape 30 miles in both directions. The plan, which will be tested in Japanese waters in 2016, involves swirls of ocean currents full of garbage driving the debris of trash to the center. 

Photo: Day Donaldson | Flickr