The great Pacific garbage patch is giving sea striders a place to breed out on the open ocean, changing the natural environment there, new research suggests.

The average American throws away three and a half pounds of trash each day. You may be surprised that some of that is ending up in the ocean, with much going to what is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. At twice the size of Texas, one woman has made cleaning this vast space her mission.

The great Pacific garbage patch, known to scientists as the North Pacific Subtropial Gyre, is a large patch of mulched up plastic and other garbage, often said to be the size of Texas, floating in the Pacific Ocean.

‘This paper shows a dramatic increase in plastic over a relatively short time period and the effect it’s having on a common North Pacific Gyre invertebrate,’ study researcher Miriam Goldstein, graduate student at the University of California San Diego, said in a statement. ‘We’re seeing changes in this marine insect that can be directly attributed to the plastic.’

The sea strider, Halobates sericeus, is related to pond striders seen in freshwater lakes. It usually lays its eggs on floating objects in the ocean, like […]