SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Scientists and volunteers who have spent the last month gathering data on how much plastic garbage is floating in the Pacific Ocean returned to San Francisco on Sunday and said most of the trash they found is medium to large-sized pieces, as opposed to tiny ones.
Volunteer crews on 30 boats have been measuring the size and mapping the location of tons of plastic waste floating between the West Coast and Hawaii that according to some estimates covers an area twice the size of Texas.
"It was a good illustration of why it is such an urgent thing to clean up because if we don't clean it up soon then we'll give the big plastic time to break into smaller and smaller pieces," said Boyan Slat, who has developed a technology that he says can start removing the garbage by 2020.
A 171-foot mother ship carrying fishing nets, buckets, buoys and bottles, among other items, and two sailing boats with volunteers who helped collect the garbage samples arrived in San Francisco's Piers 30-32. The boats went on a 30-day voyage as part of the "Mega Expedition," a major step in an effort to eventually clean up what's known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The expedition was sponsored by The Ocean Cleanup, an organization founded by Slat, a 21-year-old innovator from the Netherlands.
Slat said the group will publish a report of its findings by mid-2016 and after that they hope to test out a 1-mile barrier to collect garbage near Japan. The ultimate goal is construction of a 60-mile barrier in the middle of the Pacific.