However it was predicted or discovered, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch has become a flashpoint for the world's use and disposal of plastics, and its impact on our oceans. It sits out there, like a giant mirror, reflecting back at us over a century's worth of plastic consumption. It's akin to the closet you throw all your junk into and shut the door, so you don't have to look at it. But The Patch is there, and it's growing -- by how much scientists don't know for sure, but evidence suggests it's grown exponentially in the last ten years. Once thought to be roughly the size of Texas, recent data estimates The Patch at over twice that size, and possibly much bigger.

Most people envision a swirl of large pieces of floating garbage at sea, but the reality is much of The Patch consists of tiny, broken down pieces of plastic, and has been described more as a kind of plastic soup. While this might sound better than a giant flotilla of large debris, it's actually worse. The tiny plastic pieces act like little sponges and absorb floating chemicals in the ocean that are often toxic. Marine life mistakes the plastic for zooplankton, and when they eat it they also absorb the chemicals, putting them -- and the plastic itself -- directly into the food chain.

Back to the Kaisei. Their hope was to not only learn more about the Patch itself and its contents, but to try and figure out a way to clean up the mess, without screwing up anything else in the process. Or, as they wrote more succinctly in their trip blog: "Save our oceans so we can save ourselves." No small task.

"The marine debris issue seems a bit worse than I imagined it," wrote Crowley later in the journey via email from the boat, which was equipped with satellite communications for phone and Internet. "We've had days and days of passing through what, on first glance, seems like beautiful, deep-blue ocean wilderness; but upon closer inspection, one can spot 100-300 pieces of plastic in the area surrounding Kaisei about every half hour."

Plastic Everywhere
Ocean gyres full of plastic junk that are growing? Sounds a bit apocalyptic. How bad the issue has become is difficult for researchers to ascertain, but most signs are pointing to...pretty bad. There are a couple of things to consider here. First, as Captain Moore is fond of saying, "plastics, like diamonds, are forever." Forever is a long time, and to be fair, scientists are still debating how long various forms of plastic take to degrade, or whether they will ever completely biodegrade at all. A recent Japanese study found that some plastics may decompose relatively quickly in very warm ocean waters, but that they were releasing toxic chemical derivatives in the process.

The first plastic was invented in the mid-1800s, and most modern forms of it didn't come around until nearly one hundred years later, so we haven't had enough time to find out how long various types will be sticking around, how harmful the decomposition process will be, or whether some will indeed be with us forever. What we do know is this: most plastic that's been produced is still with us in one form or another, and could be for a very long time. Second, our production and use of plastics has accelerated exponentially since World War II, and particularly so over the last ten years. Third, we now know that those same plastics are filling our oceans, to the tune of about 5 million tons per year, and that an estimated 80% of plastic ocean debris is thought to be coming from land.

How does that impact the ordinary surfer, at their home break? Well for one, plastic garbage is turning up at beaches around the world, sometimes thousands of miles from where it started. Kamilo Beach, on the South Shore of the Big Island of Hawaii, serves as a kind of plastic poster child. On a site where ancient Hawaiians used to come to find large logs for their voyage canoes, large amounts of trash -- 90% of it plastic -- has washed ashore Kamilo and adjacent beaches, with much of it thought to have come from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Prior to some recent cleanup efforts, 8- to 10-foot piles of plastic used to line the shore, and tiny plastic pieces made up of nurdles (pre-production plastic pellets) as well as plastic broken down over time still remain, creating a plastic sand that exceeds the beach's volume of natural sand.

It also means that much of the plastic debris is coming from you and me, as opposed to ship spills and ocean dumping, as was once thought. Thousands of tons of plastic from everyday use flows down through our watersheds and storm drains, as well as blows off of land and into the oceans. Hence, we're all contributing to the problem. Putting aside coastal aesthetics for a moment, indicators are that the food chain has already been affected, and we're just now beginning to learn about the health impacts. As Captain Moore said recently in a talk in Long Beach, "You can buy certified organic produce, but no fish monger on earth can sell you a certified organic wild caught fish."

Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Algalita Foundation, along with Moore, is studying those effects on the food chain. In 2008 Eriksen, a Gulf War marine turned environmental researcher and activist, sailed with a friend from Long Beach to Hawaii on what they called the JUNKraft (made from 15,000 plastic bottles), passing through the garbage patch, to raise awareness about the plastic issue. Along the way, hungry, Eriksen caught fish that was following under the raft, only to cut open some that had bellies filled with plastic. "35% of all the fish Algalita caught in the North Pacific Gyre in 2008 had ingested plastic fragments," he says. "We're now looking at the uptake of POPs from plastic into the organs and tissues of those fish."

Bottles, Bottles, and More Bottles
One of the great dichotomies about plastic is that we've created this incredibly durable product that doesn't readily break down and is difficult to recycle, yet we use it for many one-time applications. Single-use plastics have become ubiquitous in modern society, and include things such as plastic bottles, shopping bags, and packaging. While bottled water isn't the only culprit, perhaps no other item is more representative of our love-it-and-chuck-it relationship with plastics. "You take a few seconds to down a bottle of water, and the container is going to take something like 800 years to degrade," says Raphael Seeck, aka "The Bottle Guy," and a distributor for Seychelle Water Filtration. "That's crazy when you think about it."

Reduction of single-use plastics, and more specifically water bottles and plastic shopping bags, is a big focus of Surfrider Foundation's Rise Above Plastics (www.riseaboveplastics.org). "From an individual standpoint, everyone can bring bags to the grocery store and use reusable beverage bottles," says Angela Howe, a Surfrider legal manager who works on the program. "What we really need is a cultural shift, where reusable bottles are cool and sought after."

Kathleen Egan, a San Francisco-based surfer and environmental activist, is using art made from discarded plastic, including bottles, in an attempt to resonate with people. "The Gyre is this far off garbage patch in the middle of the ocean," she says. "What I'm trying to do is help bring the problem back home to local beaches." Egan has created large wave sculptures from plastic bottles, as well as mosaics made from smaller pieces of plastic found on beaches. She's also taking the concept with her on her travels, most recently picking up plastic on the beaches of El Salvador, which she's planning on making into a mosaic. "I want to use surfing because it's part of that vision of paradise," she says, "and I'm trying to show people that this 'paradise' we love is being trashed by plastic."

Mission Control
In addition to Project Kaisei and Algalita, the most high-tech entrant into the series of voyages to the North Pacific Gyre is the Plastiki, (www.theplastiki.com) led by globetrotting environmentalist, David De Rothschild. While yet to even get wet, the expedition has already made headlines during its build phase as the Plastiki team experiments with various ship components, as well as construction materials. Engineering is clearly part of the journey, and the boat design includes eco-friendly advances such as solar panels, a wind turbine, energy-generating stationary bikes, a desalinator, a composting toilet and a hydroponic garden. The boat itself will be constructed largely out of srPET, or self-reinforcing polyethylene terephthalate, which not only is a groundbreaking material for boat building, but is much more easily recycled than other forms of plastic (recycling code #1). In addition, about 12,000 reclaimed PET bottles will be used to provide the boat's flotation.

Plastiki's 29-year-old female skipper Jo Royle, serves double duty working on environmental outreach and education. "I'm interested in using adventure as a platform to help people reconnect with their environment," she says, "and for us the boat building process is a big part of the overall mission."

Bringing It Home
The hope of Royle and the others is that all these voyages to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch will raise the level of consciousness about the issue to the American public and around the world, and indeed it already has. But this is only a starting point. "We're just at the beginning of the awareness," says Eriksen, who along with partner Anna Cummins (also currently with Algalita) is launching a new nonprofit called Livable Legacy to further education and awareness on not just plastics, but broader issues of sustainability. "Keep in mind this is a global problem, and in some parts of the world it's still not even on the radar."

"If you care about the ocean, you should care about this issue," he continues. "Plastic is ubiquitous in our throw-away culture. There has to be a monumental shift in the way we think about all of our resources, and the plastic issue is one example of why things have to change." As for solutions, Eriksen believes the problem needs to be curbed at the source, through dramatic increases in consumer awareness, an economically incentivized plastic recovery system, and perhaps most importantly -- a paradigm shift to non-throw-away designs. "We're confident that if we can get the information out there, we can all solve the problem."

Back aboard the Kaisei, Mary Crowley struggled with what the crew discovered on the expedition, which included a massive, several-ton ghost net that was brimming with plastic debris. "It's pretty alarming to come to grips with the reality of all this out here," she said via satellite phone from the deck, her voice sounding weary. "I mean I'm a lifelong sailor who's sailed all over the world, and I now realize this has all happened in my lifetime."

By the end of the voyage, the research team had found plastic in every single plankton troll they conducted, including within the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries, locations they were testing simply to get comparisons to the North Pacific Gyre. "We found more than we anticipated, and in many ways a worse problem than we expected," Crowley said about the overall journey. "But we also have a stronger-than-ever feeling that now is the time to begin solving the problem."