It seemed unbelievable, but I never found a clear spot. In the week it took to cross the subtropical high, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments
-Charles J. Moore
How was the patch formed?
The patch has been continuously growing since the start of time, but the patch started accelerating in growth in about the year 1985 due, mostly in fact of litter thrown into streams and waterways. From there, water currents conduct the litter into the oceans where it meets up with other debris, therefore causing piles and patches of junk to be formed. An interesting thing to know about the pacific garbage patch is that the majority of the garbage is actually small particles (millimeters in diameter), not bulky pieces of litter. That's the reason you cannot see the patch from space. But, the question is, from where do the small particles accumulate? The answer is from dirty sewer water (usually after a flooding) or large companies who dispose of there garbage through dumping it out into waterways.
When Was The patch discovered?
The patch was first confirmed to exist in 1997 when Charles J. Moore noticed an "enormous stretch of debris" during a the Transpacific Yacht race sailing race in the Pacific, but it was hypothesized that the patch did indeed exist, before 1999. A study conducted by a group scientists in the year 1988 noticed that there was a large amount of neustonic plastics in the pacific which led them to believe that a garbage existed in the pacific. Since discovering the patch, Charles J. Moore has started, and continues to work, at the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which is dedicated to raising awareness and finding a solution to the North Pacific garbage patch.
Zooplankton studies
Multiple studies have been conducted in and around the patch to see exactly who much zooplankton there is in the water. These studies are critical because zooplankton is at the bottom of the food chain, which means that if something happens to the zooplankton it would cause a ripple effect through the chain, until it eventually hits us humans.One such study was conducted in 1999 by Charles J. Moore to study the ratio of plastic to surface zooplankton in the patch. The results were astonishing, there was 6 times more plastic in the patch than zooplankton. The same type of study was conducted in 2002 off the coast of California which found that there was 5.2 times more plastic than surface zooplankton off the coast.
Other studies (or the lack of them)
Though this patch is roughly double the size of Texas, scientists have only just started to learn more about it and it's environmental implications. One recent study has shown that the patch is 100 times larger than it was in 1985 and that it shows no signs to be getting reduced in the near future. A second study launched in 2009 found that "biological inhabitants" were sometimes stuck in plastic bottles and that many fish in the area had plastic in their stomach, likely mistaken for food. Another study showed that there is about 5.2 kg of plastic for every kilometer squared in the patch, a low density, but considering that most of the plastic is micro, that number is quite a lot.