Our own Atlantic garbage patch?

The Great Pacific garbage patch gets all the press, but we have our own swirling sea of refuse and plastic debris - sort of. Take a boat just past the Gulf Stream off our coast and you'll enter the North Atlantic Gyre, which is quickly gaining notoriety for trashiness.

A UNCW staffer is headed out to investigate, map, and chronicle the Sargasso Sea's increasing likeness to a landfill, and you can follow her exploits here: the Plastic Ocean.

From their website:

UNCW’s Bonnie Monteleone and Jennifer O’Keefe, Director of Keep America Beautiful- New Hanover County, will represent North Carolina’s passion for the ocean by going out into the Atlantic Gyre, followed by Monteleone joining Algalita Marine Research Foundation into the North Pacific Gyre. They will be taking samples to quantify pelagic plastics found on the oceans surface, collecting surface feeding fish to necropsy for ingested plastics and bringing national awareness to the issues of man made debris entering our oceans.