FTA: "Microplastics make up 94 percent of an estimated 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic in the patch. But that only amounts to eight percent of the total tonnage. As it turns out, of the 79,000 metric tons of plastic in the patch, most of it is abandoned fishing gear—not plastic bottles or packaging drawing headlines today."
79,000 tons < 8 million tons.
"Cutting down on the amount of plastics we buy and learning to use this tricky material sensibly is still one of the most effective things we can do to live responsibly, help the planet, and inspire others to do the same. To find out how you can help make a change, check out One Green Planet’s #CrushPlastic campaign!"
Please don't distract by blaming fishing. And please read your own links. Fishing nets are a huge problem no doubt, but looking at numbers, we need to stop single-use plastics.
The fact is that we need to address both fishing and consumer use. Over-focusing on either one could be seen as distracting from the other, but it's not particularly helpful to bash other environmentally aware people over it. The problem is the people who don't even know or care.
It's not clear that this goes for all garbage in the oceans.
Still very surprising though, seems like something that could be regulated.