“We don’t fully understand the consequences the plastic is having or will have in our oceans,” he said. “What we do know is that this consequences will be felt at greater scale in an ecosystem like this” because it is unlike any other on Earth.

Every year, about 8 million tons of plastic gets into the ocean, and scientists estimate that there may be as much as 110 million tons of plastic trash in the ocean. Though the environmental effects of plastic pollution are not fully understood, plastic pollution has made its way into the food chain. Plastic debris in the ocean was thought to accumulate in big patches, mostly in subtropical gyres — big currents that converge in the middle of the ocean — but scientists estimate that only about 1 percent of plastic pollution is in these gyres and other surface waters in the open ocean.

Another model of ocean currents by one of the study’s authors predicted that plastic garbage could also accumulate in the Arctic Ocean, specifically in the Barents Sea, located off the northern coasts of Russia and Norway, which this study demonstrates.

The surface water plastic in the Arctic Ocean currently accounts for only about 3 percent of the total, but the authors suggest the amount will grow and that the seafloor there could be a big sink for plastic.