Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: When was the "plastic island" in the Pacific Ocean discovered?
Charles J. Moore, returning home through the North Pacific Gyre after competing in the Transpacific Yacht Race in 1997, claimed to have come upon an enormous stretch of floating debris. Moore alerted the oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who subsequently dubbed the region the "Eastern Garbage Patch" (EGP).[10] The area is frequently featured in media reports as an exceptional example of marine pollution.[11]
Palmerston Island is a coral atoll in the Cook Islands in the Pacific Ocean about 500 km northwest of Rarotonga. It was discovered by James Cook on 16 June 1774.
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.
In the second half of the 16th century and the 17th century exploration of Asia and the Pacific Ocean continued with explorers such as Andrés de Urdaneta (1498–1568), who discovered the maritime route from Asia to the Americas; Pedro Fernandes de Queirós (1565–1614), who discovered the Pitcairn Islands and the Vanuatu archipelago; Álvaro de Mendaña (1542–1595), who discovered the Tuvalu archipelago, the Marquesas, the Solomon Islands and Wake 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.
Little is known regarding the early history of the Tuamotus. It is believed that they were settled c. 700 AD by people from the Society Islands. Europeans first discovered the islands in 1521, when Ferdinand Magellan reached them while sailing across the Pacific Ocean. Subsequent explorers visited the islands over the centuries, including Thor Heyerdahl, the famous Norwegian ethnographer who sailed the Kon-Tiki expedition across the Pacific in 1947.
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.
One study shows estimates of 5.25 trillion individual pieces of microplastcs, weighing nearly 267,000 tons are currently floating in our oceans. It has been estimated that since being invented, 8.3 billion tons of plastics has been produced, with 80% (6.64 billion tons) being dumped in landfills, on land, and in the oceans. Plastic particles don't biodegrade or break down and instead just fragment into smaller pieces. If current trends in the amount of plastics flowing into our oceans continues, combined with overfishing, will result in plastics outweighing fish in the oceans by 2050.
The United Nations Ocean Conference estimated that the oceans might contain more weight in plastics than fish by the year 2050.[50] Some long-lasting plastics end up in the stomachs of marine animals.[10][51][52] Plastic attracts seabirds and fish. When marine life consumes plastic allowing it to enter the food chain, this can lead to greater problems when species that have consumed plastic are then eaten by other predators.
Nelson Island occupies the only emerging reef structure in the northern fringe of the Great Chagos Bank. This lonely island was discovered by a French explorer, Alexis Legour, in 1820. It seems to have been always uninhabited, even between the 17th and the 20th century when there were coconut plantations in other islands of the Chagos. The island stretches in an East-West direction. Its length is and it is only wide in its broadest area. Owing to its remoteness there has always been a numerous population of sea turtles in this island. In terms of its geology, detailed photographic images shows evidence of a coral limestone core that has been overlaid by sandy loam.
One of the major and evident problems affecting the native wildlife is the significant accumulation of plastic bottles and other assorted debris such as damaged fishnets, shoes as well as an assortment of plastic and polystyrene materials that are washed up by localized ocean currents, winds and sea-storms. Such debris can also be seen in the Google Street View recording of the island, for example see .
After World War II, the population of Southern California increased dramatically, and groundwater in the area had been over-exploited to the point of creating saltwater intrusion from the Pacific Ocean, rendering the local groundwater non-potable. In their attempt to develop technology to desalinate ocean water, engineers discovered that their technology was more efficient and cost-effective when applied on brackish water. The advent of plastic allowed for even greater advancements in water reuse, and enabled the invention of reverse osmosis in 1959 by two UCLA students, Sidney Loeb and Srinivasa Sourirajan.
Due to their strategic location south of the Beagle Channel, Chile and Argentina disagreed if the islands were on the Pacific Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean. The dispute started in 1904 when Argentina started to claim the islands, overlapping the Chilean claim. In 1893, both countries agreed that Argentina should only have access to the Atlantic Ocean and Chile to the Pacific Ocean. Both countries disagreed if the Beagle Channel was to the north or the west of the islands. Whichever government controlled Picton, Lennox, and Nueva could stake territorial rights further into the ocean (important for the fishing industry), to several other islands, and to a larger part of Antarctica (import for resource development and exploration).
In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would eventually result in the first world circumnavigation. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century.[12] Although Magellan himself died in the Philippines in 1521, Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano led the remains of the expedition back to Spain across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope, completing the first world circumnavigation in a single expedition in 1522.[13] Sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands,[14] the Aru Islands,[15] and Papua New Guinea.[16] In 1542–43 the Portuguese also reached Japan.[17]
The Pacific Islands are the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Three major groups of islands in the Pacific Ocean are Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia. 
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]
This ocean has most of the islands in the world. There are about 25,000 islands in the Pacific Ocean.[42][43][44] The islands entirely within the Pacific Ocean can be divided into three main groups known as Micronesia, Melanesia and Polynesia. Micronesia, which lies north of the equator and west of the International Date Line, includes the Mariana Islands in the northwest, the Caroline Islands in the center, the Marshall Islands to the west and the islands of Kiribati in the southeast.[45][46]
A junk raft is a type of home-built watercraft made of plastic bottles or other recycled materials constructed by artists and community-minded groups organizing recreational flotillas, or by environmentally concerned individuals seeking to draw attention to the problem of floating debris and the need for recycling. It can also be an improvised small, functional watercraft from readily available materials.
The JUNK Raft Project was organized by Dr. Marcus Eriksen, Joel Paschal and Anna Cummins in Long Beach, California in 2008, to bring attention to the issue of plastic pollution in the Great Pacific garbage patch. The project was launched with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, after founder Charles J. Moore encountered the patch in 1997. Organizers hoped to "creatively raise awareness about plastic debris and pollution in the ocean," specifically the Great Pacific Garbage Patch trapped in the North Pacific Gyre, by sailing 2,600 miles across the Pacific Ocean on a raft made from an old Cessna 310 aircraft fuselage and six pontoons filled with 15,000 old plastic bottles. Crewed by Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Foundation and film-maker Joel Paschal, the raft set off from Long Beach, California on 1 June 2008, arriving in Honolulu, Hawaii on 28 August 2008. On the way, they gave valuable water to record-holding ocean rower Roz Savage, also on an environmental awareness voyage, when her supplies dwindled.
The South Pacific garbage patch is an area of elevated levels of marine debris and plastic particle pollution, most of which is concentrated within the ocean's pelagic zone. It is located within the South Pacific Gyre, which itself spans from waters east of Australia to the South American continent, as far north as the Equator, and south until reaching the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. The degradation of plastics in the ocean also leads to a rise in the level of toxins in the area. This garbage patch is the most recently discovered having only been confirmed in mid-2017. The South Pacific garbage patch has been compared in nature to the Great Pacific garbage patch's state in 2007, making the former ten years younger. The garbage patch is impossible to detect using satellites, or other visual means as most particles are smaller than a grain of rice.
The existence of the Great Pacific garbage patch, the first to be discovered, was predicted in a 1988 paper published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) of the United States. The prediction was based on results obtained by several Alaska-based researchers between 1985 and 1988 that measured neustonic plastic in the North Pacific Ocean.
In late 1890s Albert Ellis, who worked for the Pacific Islands Company Ltd, discovered rich phosphate rock deposits on several Pacific islands, including Nauru and Makatea. Soon, the Pacific Islands Company was transformed into the Pacific Phosphate Company, with their founders Baron Stanmore and John T. Arundel investing into phosphate trade and establishing a virtual monopoly on phosphate shipments to both Australia and New Zealand. Mining started in 1906 in Nauru, and the company needed more vessels to transport the cargo. 
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".
In 1564, five Spanish ships carrying 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi, and sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands.[18] For the remainder of the 16th century, Spanish influence was paramount, with ships sailing from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines via Guam, and establishing the Spanish East Indies. The Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries, linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history. Spanish expeditions also discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, and the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific.[19]
Once waterborne, debris becomes mobile. Flotsam can be blown by the wind, or follow the flow of ocean currents, often ending up in the middle of oceanic gyres where currents are weakest. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is one such example of this, comprising a vast region of the North Pacific Ocean rich with anthropogenic wastes. Estimated to be double the size of Texas, the area contains more than 3 million tons of plastic.
Patches may be large enough to be viewed by satellite. For example, when the Malaysian Flight MH370, disappeared in 2014, satellites were scanning the oceans surface for any sign of it, and instead of finding debris from the plane they came across floating garbage. The gyre contains approximately six pounds of plastic for every pound of plankton.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency describes both the Pollution Prevention Act and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act as establishing a nationwide objective for environmental protection. In detailing the wave of communities initiating bans on single-use plastic bags, the EPA cites the following rationale for limits on single-use plastic bags:
Single-use plastic bags are considered to be a major contributor to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an area in the Pacific Ocean with high concentrations of litter and floating plastic by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In 1574 he discovered an alternative maritime route between Callao and Valparaíso, much faster than the old route which bordered the coastline. By taking a detour west from the coast, he managed to avoid the northernly Humboldt Current which used to slow down ships sailing south along the coast. In doing so, he discovered the Juan Fernández Islands archipelago, located west of present-day Valparaíso in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. He also discovered the Pacific islands of San Félix and San Ambrosio in 1574.