By Victoria Gill
Science correspondent.
The image is from the Ocean Voyages Institute.
The image caption is.
The researchers and the Ocean Voyages Institute collected ocean debris.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an area of the ocean where marine animals live on plastic debris.
Many of the creatures are living on a patch halfway between the coast of California and Hawaii.
Plants and animals were found on most of the debris.
Scientists are concerned that plastic can be used to transport non-native species.
The study looked at plastic items larger than 2in in diameter gathered from a gyre in the Pacific.
Dr Linsey Haram said that plastic is more permanent than natural debris in the ocean. They are creating a more permanent habitat in this area.
Dr Haram worked with the Ocean Voyages Institute, a charity that collects plastic pollution on sailing expeditions, and with oceanographers from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
The image is from the Smithsonian.
The image caption is.
More than half of the items examined were usually found on the coast.
There are at least five plastic gyres in the world. This one is thought to hold 79,000 tons of floating plastic in a region of more than 610,000 square miles.
"Anything ends up out there," said Dr Haram. There's definitely a large amount of plastic corralled there, but it's not an island of plastic.
It's difficult to see much of that with the naked eye. There are also vessels that have been floating in the gyre since the Japanese tsunami in 2011.
The researchers who reported their findings in the journal Nature Communications began their investigation after the devastating tsunami.
Hundreds of coastal Japanese marine species were found alive on items that landed on the shores of the North American Pacific coast and the Hawaiian Islands after the disaster.
Dr Haram told the news that they want to get a handle on how plastic may be used to transport invaders to the coast.
The image caption is.
The research began after the devastating Tohoku earthquake in Japan.
Some of the organisms found on the plastic items were open-ocean species, which are organisms that survive by "rafting" on floating debris. The diversity of coastal species on the plastic was the most eye-opening finding.
She said that over half of the items had coastal species on them. There are a lot of questions about what it means to be a coastal species.
The scientists said that the discovery highlighted an "unintended consequence" of plastic pollution.
A previous study estimated that 25,000 million tonnes of plastic waste would be generated by the year 2050.
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Plastic pollution.
Marine life.
The Pacific Ocean.
Hawaii.
