Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: How large is the plastic island in the Pacific Ocean?
The patch is not easily seen from the sky, because the plastic is dispersed over a large area. Researchers from The Ocean Cleanup project claimed that the patch covers 1.6 million square kilometers. The plastic concentration is estimated to be up to 100 kilograms per square kilometer in the center, going down to 10 kilograms per square kilometer in the outer parts of the patch. An estimated 80,000 metric tons of plastic inhabit the patch, totaling 1.8 trillion pieces. 92% of the mass in the patch comes from objects larger than 0.5 centimeters.[4]
Sun directed and produced her first feature-length documentary, "Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch", examining the plastic pollution in the oceans and its effects on the environment, marine life, and ultimately humans. The Great Pacific garbage patch is a huge collection of trash trapped in a gyre in the Pacific Ocean.
As can be seen on the purple/blue map, the Pacific Ocean is so large that it stretches halfway around the world; parts of the Pacific off the coast of Peru are antipodal to parts of the same ocean off the coast of Southeast Asia. For example, the island of Ko Chang - which is the second or third largest island in Thailand - is nearly antipodal to San Lorenzo Island, which is the largest island of Peru.
A study conducted by Scripps Institution of Oceanography showed that the average plastic content in the stomachs of 141 mesopelagic fish over 27 different species was 9.2%. Their estimate for the ingestion rate of plastic debris by these fish in the North Pacific was between 12000 and 24000 tons per year. The most popular mesopelagic fish is the lantern fish. It resides in the central ocean gyres, a large system of rotating ocean currents. Since lantern fish serve as a primary food source for the fish that consumers purchase, including tuna and swordfish, the plastics they ingest become part of the food chain. The lantern fish is one of the main bait fish in the ocean, and it eats large amounts of plastic fragments, which in turn will not make them nutritious enough for other fish to consume.
In 2010, the 5 Gyres Project set off on the first of its planned series of transoceanic voyages to determine whether the South Atlantic, South Pacific, and Indian Ocean gyres were affected in the same way as the North Pacific and North Atlantic gyres. On the Indian Ocean leg of their trip, they travelled between Perth, Australia, and Port Louis, Mauritius (east of Madagascar); each of the water samples they collected in the between contained plastic. They found that the South Atlantic, South Pacific, and Indian Ocean gyres were affected in the same way as the North Pacific and North Atlantic gyres. Anna Cummins, cofounder of 5 Gyres Institute called the pollution they found "a thin plastic soup".
The Pacific Islands are the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Three major groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean are Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. 
From 1527 to 1595 a number of other large Spanish expeditions crossed the Pacific Ocean, leading to the discovery of the Marshall Islands and Palau in the North Pacific, as well as Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Solomon Islands archipelago, the Cook Islands and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific.
Henderson Island (formerly also San Juan Bautista and Elizabeth Island) is an uninhabited member of the Pitcairn Islands archipelago in the south Pacific Ocean. Its remote location and unsuitability for human habitation have made it the subject of scientific study. Ten of its 51 flowering plants, all four of its land birds and about a third of the identified insects and gastropods are endemic – a remarkable diversity given the island's size. It was previously considered one of the world's last two raised coral atolls whose ecosystems remained relatively unaffected by human contact. However, research in 2017 showed that a large amount of plastic debris has accumulated on the island. 
In the Pacific Gyre, specifically 20°N-40°N latitude, large bodies with floating marine debris can be found. Models of wind patterns and ocean currents indicate that the plastic waste in the northern Pacific is particularly dense where the Subtropical Convergence Zone (STCZ), 23°N-37°N latitude, meets a southwest-northeast line, found north of the Hawaiian archipelago.
Gymnothorax annasona is a moray eel found in the southwest Pacific Ocean, around Lord Howe Island and Norfolk Island. It was first named by Whitley in 1937, and is commonly known as the Lord Howe Island moray or the Lord Howe moray.
Oceanic plateaus produced by large igneous provinces are often associated with hotspots, mantle plumes, and volcanic islands — such as Iceland, Hawaii, Cape Verde, and Kerguelen. The three largest plateaus, the Caribbean, Ontong Java, and Mid-Pacific Mountains, are located on thermal swells. Other oceanic plateaus, however, are made of rifted continental crust, for example Falkland Plateau, Lord Howe Rise, and parts of Kerguelen, Seychelles, and Arctic ridges.
Plateaus formed by large igneous provinces were formed by the equivalent of continental flood basalts such as the Deccan Traps in India and the Snake River Plain in the United States.
From 1527 to 1595 a number of other large Spanish expeditions crossed the Pacific Ocean, leading to the discovery of the Marshall Islands and Palau in the North Pacific, as well as Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Solomon Islands archipelago, the Cook Islands and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific.
The Mid-Pacific Mountains (MPM) is a large oceanic plateau located in the central North Pacific Ocean or south of the Hawaiian–Emperor seamount chain. Of volcanic origin and Mesozoic in age, it is located on the oldest part of the Pacific Plate and rises up to (Darwin Rise) above the surrounding ocean floor and is covered with several layers of thick sedimentary sequences that differs from those of other plateaux in the North Pacific. seamounts are distributed over the MGM. Some of the highest points in the range are above sea level which include Wake Island and Marcus Island.
Epinephelus maculatus, the highfin grouper, is found in the Pacific Ocean: Eastern Indian Ocean and Western Pacific from Cocos-Keeling Islands, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Ryukyu Islands, Ogasawara Islands, Philippines, New Guinea, Great Barrier Reef, Lord Howe Island, New Caledonia, New Ireland, Fiji, Samoa, Palau, Caroline Islands, Marshall Islands, and Kiribati (Gilbert Islands).
At TEDxDelft2012,[18][19] Boyan Slat unveiled a concept for removing large amounts of marine debris from oceanic gyres. Calling his project The Ocean Cleanup, he proposed to use surface currents to let debris drift to collection platforms. Operating costs would be relatively modest and the operation would be so efficient that it might even be profitable. The concept makes use of floating booms that divert rather than catch the debris. This avoids bycatch, while collecting even the smallest particles. According to Slat's calculations, a gyre could be cleaned up in five years' time, amounting to at least 7.25million tons of plastic across all gyres.[20] He also advocated "radical plastic pollution prevention methods" to prevent gyres from reforming.[20][21] In 2015, The Ocean Cleanup project was a category winner in the Design Museum's 2015 Designs of the Year awards.[22] A fleet of 30 vessels, including a 32-metre (105-foot) mothership, took part in a month-long voyage to determine how much plastic is present using trawls and aerial surveys.[22]
This is a list of many of the major Pacific islands, organized by archipelago or political unit. In order to keep this list of moderate size, links are given to more complete lists for countries with large numbers of small or uninhabited islands.(New Hebrides; see also Islands of Vanuatu) Port Vila
North Pacific Islands:
"Charybdis natator" is found throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans from eastern South Africa and Madagascar north to the Red Sea and across the Indian Ocean, including the Mascarene Islands and the Seychelles, to the western pacific where it extends north to Japan and south to northern Australia including Lord Howe Island.
The overuse of plastics results in a dumping of plastics into the oceans at a rate of 8 million tons per year. The pilling up of plastics around the world continues to build up and now will facing issues like the Great Pacific garbage patch. Scientists now have estimated that at the rate will continue to dump plastics into our oceans, by 2050 there will have more plastic than fish in our oceans.
The red-tailed tropicbird ranges across the southern Indian, and western and central Pacific Oceans, from the African coast to Indonesia, the waters around the southern reaches of Japan, across to Chile, and the Hawaiian Islands, where they are more common on the northwestern islands. There are large breeding colonies on Europa, Aldabra and Christmas Islands in the Indian Ocean, with smaller colonies in Madagascar, where it nests on the tiny island of Nosy Ve, the Seychelles, and Mauritius. In Australia, it nests on Queensland's coral islands (including Raine Island and Lady Elliot Island), and Ashmore Reef and Rottnest Island off Western Australia, as well as Sugarloaf Rock at Cape Naturaliste and Busselton on the Western Australian coastline itself, and the offshore territories of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Norfolk and Lord Howe islands. In New Zealand territory it breeds on the Kermadec Islands. Elsewhere in the Pacific it breeds in Fiji, New Caledonia, French Polynesia, Hawaii, with a large colony on Kure Atoll, the Cook Islands, Pitcairn Island, and islands off Japan and Chile.
Pacific leatherbacks migrate about 6,000mi (9,700km) across the Pacific from their nesting sites in Indonesia to eat California jellyfish. One cause for their endangered state is plastic bags floating in the ocean. Pacific leatherback sea turtles mistake these plastic bags for jellyfish; an estimated one-third of adults have ingested plastic.[55] Plastic enters the oceans along the west coast of urban areas, where leatherbacks forage, with Californians using upward of 19billion plastic bags every year.[56]
The Vancouver Aquarium has a program called Ocean Wise Life, which is aimed at promoting sustainable seafood in restaurants, markets, and other food service facilities, as well as ocean conscious plastic use and clothing. Its main thrust is to avoid species whose fishing typically causes large bycatches, species from areas where the habitat will degrade if overfished, and species which themselves are overfished. Ocean Wise works directly with food service companies to select sustainable seafood and actively promote them to the general public. The options are highlighted on participating restaurant menus and display cases with the Ocean Wise symbol, to help consumers make environmentally friendly seafood choices. Today, well over 700 restaurants and food stores in Canada are participants in the Ocean Wise sustainable seafood program.
In 2018, with the overarching organization name change to Ocean Wise Conservation Association, the program formerly called Ocean Wise was changed to Ocean Wise Life, and expanded from sustainable seafood to also include Plastic Wise, which teaches and recommends responsible plastic use and addresses the crisis of ocean plastic, as well as studying the effects of plastic fibers and microfibers in clothing, and how to mitigate the problem. 
There is truly a staggering amount of microplastics in our world’s oceans. Though there is debate over exactly how much microplastic is in the world’s oceans a 2015 study estimated that there was between 93 and 236 thousand metric tons of microplastics in the world’s oceans. A study of the distribution of Eastern Pacific Ocean surface plastic debris helps to illustrate how the concentration of plastics in the ocean is on the rise. Though the study admits further research is needed to predict trends in ocean plastic concentration, the study, using data on surface plastic concentration (pieces of plastic km) from 1972-1985 n=60 and 2002-2012 n=457 within the same plastic accumulation zone, found the mean plastic concentration increase between the two sets of data, including a 10-fold increase of 18,160 to 189,800 pieces of plastic km. And though this study is based on data of surface plastic concentration, not specifically microplastic, additional research has found microplastics to account for 92% of plastic debris on the ocean’s surface, which adds context to the study.
A major source of food for many marine animals, lanternfish are an important link in the food chain of many local ecosystems, being heavily preyed upon by whales and dolphins, large pelagic fish such as salmon, tuna and sharks, grenadiers and other deep-sea fish (including other lanternfish), pinnipeds, sea birds, notably penguins, and large squid such as the jumbo squid, "Dosidicus gigas". Lanternfish themselves have been found to feed on bits of plastic debris accumulating in the oceans. At least one lantern fish was found with over 80 pieces of plastic chips in its gut, according to scientists monitoring ocean plastic in the Pacific Ocean's eastern garbage patch.
The Galapagos shark is found mainly off tropical oceanic islands. In the Atlantic Ocean, it occurs around Bermuda, the Virgin Islands, Madeira, Cape Verde, Ascension Island, Saint Helena and São Tomé Island. In the Indian Ocean, it is known from Walter's Shoal off southern Madagascar. In the Pacific Ocean, it occurs around Lord Howe Island, the Marianas Islands, the Marshall Islands, the Kermadec Islands, Tupai, the Tuamotu Archipelago, the Hawaiian Islands, the Galapagos Islands, Cocos Island, the Revillagigedo Islands, Clipperton Island, and Malpelo. There are a few reports of this species in continental waters off the Iberian Peninsula, Baja California, Guatemala, Colombia, and eastern Australia.
The Lapita culture was a prehistoric Pacific Ocean people who flourished in the Pacific Islands from about 1600 BCE to about 500 BCE. Archaeologists believe that the Lapita are the ancestors of historic cultures in Polynesia, Micronesia, and some coastal areas of Melanesia. The characteristics of the Lapita culture are the extension of human settlement to previously uninhabited islands scattered over a large area in the Pacific Ocean, the spread of Oceanic languages in that area, the distinctive geometric dentate-stamped pottery, and the use and widespread distribution of obsidian.