Plastic Pacific, Caught on Film

In recent blog posts and in our Winter 2008 issue, we alluded to a “Texas-sized island of plastic floating in the Pacific ocean.” Sounds crazy, right? Well, the story was enough to motivate Vice to rent a boat and strike out into the Pacific gyre—the remote location between San Francisco and Hawaii where ocean currents meet—in search of the fabled island. They documented their trip on a blog and in a video series. As Thomas Morton wrote about his trip, “Hope you’re into cancer and sex-reversal!” But seriously, their footage is sobering and definitely worth a look. Hopefully, as more environmental fairytales are proven true, we’ll see more action to clean up our global act!