Agreed. But that doesn't justify making it sound like there's a Mexico garbage barge out there.

"Mexico garbage barge" sounds like it be a great band name.

This post is either meta or deja-vu... I swear someone commented this last week.

Is the methane in the atmosphere visible to the naked eye? Guess it's not significant.

If the average reader imagines a dense raft of plastic bags and water bottles the size of Mexico, it's a bad headline.

I don't consider myself stupid, yet that's exactly what I imagined when I read the headline.

The problem is that this sort of article gets "spun" into a much worse one. Complete with the infamous "floating garbage so bad you can't see water underneath it" photo. People immediately conjure up images of a floating garbage island that is larger than Mexico. Not to mention how catchy and self-gratifying it is to share such a spun article on social media where the conveniently "picked" photo happens to be the floating-garbage one. This is why we can't have nice things and reasonable discussions on nuanced topics.

"A Lie Can Travel Halfway Around the World While the Truth Is Putting On Its Shoes"

imo it's worse that it's particles instead of complete plastic objects.

The tiny particles are near-impossible to clean, hard to identify (without testing), and are arguably more dangerous to the wildlife.

It is a very serious problem, and it needs to be fixed.

For the two situations - loads of large trash floating at the surface or 4 particles per cubic metre suspended at all depths - you get very different solutions.

Look how popular that solar-powered ocean plastic scoop thing is, and how useless it is.

I imagine a fleet of self-replicating wave glider / baleen barges that slowly, relentlessly ply the oceans, gathering the bulk materials to make their offspring.

"Wave Glider Plastic Micro-Particle Cleanup Patch Bigger Than Mexico Found in Pacific (2031)"