The Great Pacific Garbage Patch Is Transforming Into a Wildlife Hotspot — And That's a Problem

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a solid island of rubbish, but a vast region of ocean where currents concentrate floating plastic into a soup of debris. It sits in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, the huge rotating current system between California and Hawaii, where floating objects get trapped rather than drifting away.

A major scientific survey published in 2018 estimated that the patch holds about 1.8 trillion plastic pieces, with a total weight of around 79,000 tonnes — most of it larger, hard plastics such as nets, ropes, crates and buoys that can survive for years at sea.

More recent monitoring has shown that debris from the patch is increasingly washing up on places like Kauai in Hawaii, where volunteers removed more than 160,000 pounds of marine rubbish from beaches in 2024 alone, much of it abandoned fishing gear.

Until recently, scientists assumed this offshore zone was too harsh for most coastal life. Open-ocean waters lack the rocky shores, piers and tidal zones that coastal species usually need. Anything torn from land by storms was expected to die off relatively quickly once it drifted out to sea.

That assumption has now been turned upside down.

Dozens of Coastal Species are Now Living on Plastic 'Islands'

A new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution examined 105 pieces of plastic collected from the eastern side of the gyre — bottles, crates, buoys, nets, ropes and buckets — and found living invertebrates on 98% of them.

Taxonomists identified 46 different invertebrate taxa clinging to the debris, including barnacles, crabs, amphipods, bryozoans, hydroids and sea anemones. Crucially, 37 of those were coastal species and only nine were classic open-ocean (pelagic) species, meaning roughly 80% of the diversity on the plastic came from organisms that would normally live on shorelines or shallow seabeds.

On most items, coastal and pelagic creatures were literally sharing the same small surface. Coastal species were found on just over 70% of debris pieces; pelagic species on more than 94%. On average, each plastic object carried four to five types of animals, with nets and ropes hosting especially dense mini-communities because of their tangle of fibres and hiding places.

The big question was whether these coastal organisms were just temporary hitch-hikers, or whether they could actually live out their whole life cycles in the open ocean. The answer appears to be the latter.

Researchers found:

• Brooding females — carrying eggs or young — in several crustacean groups, including crabs, amphipods and isopods
• Reproductive structures on certain hydroids
• A full range of sizes, from tiny juveniles to adults, in some sea anemones and amphipods, all living on the same piece of plastic

That pattern suggests new generations are being born and growing up on plastic rafts, not simply arriving from the coast all at once. Many of these coastal species can reproduce asexually and have larvae that do not need to drift long distances, traits that fit perfectly with life on small, isolated rafts that slowly circle within the gyre.

Why a 'Wildlife Hotspot' Made of Rubbish Is Bad News

At first glance, the idea of animals thriving on plastic might sound like a silver lining. In reality, scientists are worried.

The authors of the Nature Ecology & Evolution paper argue that we are seeing the rise of a new 'neopelagic' community — a mix of coastal and open-ocean species living permanently on plastic rafts in the high seas.

That raises several problems:

• Invasive species super-highway – Long-lasting plastic 'islands' can carry coastal species across entire oceans, giving them a chance to land and establish themselves in new regions, where they may become invasive and out-compete native wildlife. Scientists saw a preview of this after the 2011 Great East Japan Tsunami, when debris carrying Japanese coastal species washed ashore in North America and Hawaii over several years.

• Disrupted food webs – Coastal predators, grazers and filter-feeders now living in the middle of the Pacific are competing with traditional pelagic species for food and space. Over time, that could change who eats whom, and how energy and nutrients flow through open-ocean ecosystems.

• More entanglement and ingestion risks – The same nets, ropes and crates that provide habitat are still deadly to larger animals. Turtles, seabirds and marine mammals can become entangled in fishing gear or ingest plastic while trying to feed on the organisms growing on it.

• Chemical exposure – Plastics can leach additives and also concentrate pollutants from seawater on their surfaces, potentially exposing the animals living on them — and anything that eats those animals — to higher levels of toxic chemicals.

In simple terms, plastic pollution is no longer just clogging beaches and harming individual animals. It is actively reshaping where marine species can live and how ocean ecosystems are structured.

Can We Fix a Problem That's Now Part of the Ecosystem?

Organisations such as The Ocean Cleanup are testing large-scale systems to remove floating debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, while coastal clean-ups are trying to intercept rubbish before it drifts offshore

But new research underlines an uncomfortable reality: after decades of plastic build-up, the patch is no longer just trash. It now functions as habitat for a growing community of species that have adapted to live on it. Removing plastic at scale without further harming those organisms – or accidentally moving them somewhere else – will be a scientific and ethical challenge.

What scientists agree on is that the only lasting solution is to stop so much plastic entering the ocean in the first place, by cutting production, improving waste management and redesigning materials. Otherwise, the 'wildlife hotspot' in the middle of the Pacific will keep growing — and so will its risks for the rest of the planet's seas.