The Great Pacific Garbage Patch was the site of a swim by a French swimmer in 2019.
He was surprised to find that he was not alone in the water.
Mr. Lecomte said that there was life all around the plastic debris.
The patch was not as big as a garbage island with plastic bottles, fishing nets, tires and toothbrushes. The blue dragon nudibranchs, Portuguese man-o-wars, and other small surface-dwelling animals were floating at its surface.
Scientists aboard the ship were sampling the patch's surface waters. The team found that the patch had higher concentrations of neuston than outside it. There were more neuston than plastic in some parts of the patch.
Rebecca Helm, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and co-author, said it was surprising to see how much life and plastic we found out there. It was amazing to see them in that concentration.
The findings were posted last month but have not yet been reviewed. If they hold up, it may complicate efforts to remove plastic from the patch.
The world's oceans have five gyres, large systems of circular currents that are powered by global wind patterns. Anything floating within one will eventually be pulled into its center. Garbage patches have been created by floating plastic waste for nearly a century. According to the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, the Great Pacific Patch contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic. All that trash is a great place to live.
Dr. Helm and her colleagues pulled many individual creatures out of the sea with their nets: by-the-wind sailors, free-floating hydrozoans that travel on ocean breezes, blue buttons, quarter-sized cousins of the jellyfish, and violet sea-snails, which build Potential evidence was found that these creatures may be reproducing.
The researcher with the Monterey Bay Aquarium said he wasn't surprised.
Neuston are found far from land in the ocean gyres.
They are difficult to study because they occur in the open ocean and you can't collect them unless you go on a marine expedition, which costs a lot of money, said Lanna Cheng, a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
This study, which is limited in size and scope, offers valuable insights to scientists because they don't know much about the life history and ecology of these creatures.
Dr. Helm said that organizations working to remove plastic waste from the patch may need to consider what the study means for their efforts.
Several nonprofits are working to remove plastic from the Great Pacific Patch. The Ocean Cleanup Foundation in the Netherlands developed a net to collect and concentrate marine debris as it is pulled across the sea's surface by winds and currents. A ship takes its contents to land for proper disposal once the net is full.
Dr. Helm and other scientists warn of the dangers of such nets. Changes to the net's design have been made to reduce bycatch, but Dr. Helm believes removing plastic from the patch could pose a threat to its inhabitants.
When it comes to figuring out what to do about the plastic in the ocean, I think we need to be very careful. The results of her study emphasize the need to study the open ocean before we try to manipulate it, clean it up or extract minerals from it.
The oceanographer with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation disagreed with Dr. Helm.
It's too early to say how we should respond to that study, he said. We collect tons of plastic every week because it is affecting the environment.
More than a million seabirds are killed every year by plastic in the ocean, according to UNESCO. Animals end up starving to death when they mistake plastic for food and end up with stomachs full of it.
Microplastics are almost impossible to remove from the environment because they penetrate every branch of the food web.
Everyone agrees that we need to stop the flow of plastic into the ocean.
Mr. Lecomte said we need to turn off the tap.
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