The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Poses New Threat to Marine Life A landfill twice the size of Texas is floating in the middle of the Pacific, and scientists are starting to get worried.

Imagine a landfill twice the size of Texas, filled with junk, castoffs and other trash. Now imagine it’s floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

By Catherine Cooney. Time, Newsfeed, 11^th May, 2012

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling vortex of plastic and flotsam, stretches across a vast swath of the Ocean and has long been a concern of scientists worried about its effects on marine life. Now, researchers from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography have found that a sharp increase in debris floating in a region between Hawaii and California — dubbed the Eastern Garbage Patch — is significantly affecting the environment of one of the ocean’s smallest residents.

The finding, published Wednesday in Biology Letters, reports that a marine insect that skims the oceans surface is laying eggs on top of plastic bits rather than natural flotsam, which scientists are concerned could be replaced by debris in its habitat.

Read more: http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/05/11/the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-poses-new-threat-to-marine-life/#ixzz1uZUlysHe