Last updated at 00:20 06 February 2008

A rubbish dump twice the size of the

United States has been discovered

floating in the Pacific Ocean.

The vast expanse of debris, made up

of plastic junk including footballs,

kayaks, Lego blocks and carrier bags,

is kept together by swirling underwater

currents.

It stretches from 500 nautical miles off

the Californian coast, across the

northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as

far as Japan.

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Because the rubbish, which

has been called a “plastic soup” and a

“trash vortex”, is translucent and lies

just below the water's surface it cannot

be seen in satellite photographs.

American oceanographer Charles

Moore discovered the Great Pacific

Garbage Patch by chance in 1997 while

taking a short cut home from a yacht

race.

He said: “Every time I came on

deck there was trash floating by. How

could we have fouled such a huge area?

How could this go on for a week?”

He warned that the rubbish could

double in size over the next decade if

consumers do not cut back on their

use of plastics. More than a million

seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals

die every year as a result of plastic

rubbish.

Syringes, cigarette lighters

and toothbrushes have all been found

inside the stomachs of dead seabirds.

The rubbish can also be dangerous for

humans, because tiny plastic pellets

in the sea can attract man-made

chemicals which then enter the food chain.

Research director Dr Marcus

Eriksen said: “What goes into the ocean

goes into these animals and onto your

dinner plate. It's that simple.”

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer compared

the rubbish to a living entity. He said: “It

moves around like a big animal without

a leash.” Describing what happens when

it reaches land, he said: “The garbage

patch barfs, and you get a beach covered

with this confetti of plastic.”

The rubbish dump is made up of two

linked areas either side of Hawaii.

Around one-fifth of the junk is thrown

off ships or oil platforms, while the

rest comes from the land.