A worthy endeavor indeed.

I guess more power to him, but he's wasting his time.
The ocean already has a mechanism to "take out the trash", or more literally, dispose of it: microbes literally eat up plastic once it's small enough.
I'm not suggesting we go on littering to our hearts content; I don't and don't like it when others do. But the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is yet another over-blown non-problem.

Reminds me of the emperors new clothes fable.
How do you get someone to give you a ton of money? Coin an alarmist green-pandering term like "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" and attach it to an invisible reason!
Seriously. You can't see it, no thinking person cares, and it's going to go away all by itself if you leave it alone. Nobody needs to spend money trying to see the invisible.

Greatest amount of bull**** I've read in ages. The lovely picture at the top of the page doesn't show it as it is now, all torn and tattered. Useless piece of public funded junk. Plastic doesn't have an infrared signature as it takes on the temperature of its surroundings when in water. Lousy sciences.

@toddzrx: "microbes literally eat up plastic once it's small enough."
That's an interesting theory. I've never seen any actual data on that being a real thing. Most of the research I've seen has proven that microbes except a few extremeness and genetically engineered microbes are incapable of eating it and that certain forms are lethal to most microbes. The research has also showed that microscopic pieces of plastic invade vital systems in larger life and cause a number of disruptions that can be devastating and even fatal to the organism. This is why consumer products with plastic micro-beads have been outlawed recently. They have been discovering the micro-beads are killing fish, mollusks, and even plants in our waterways and oceans.
So do you have a source I could learn more about these plastic eating microbes or is that just "science according to toddzrx"?

The effects of religious and republican attacks on science and critical thinking skills in public schools is vividly apparent in the majority of comments I'm reading these days. It's also clear we humans have not been trying to breed for increased intelligence. Shame, that.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is an overblown environmentalist myth. The "garbage" is mostly microscopic, invisible to the naked eye. It collects in ocean gyres but you can't actually see it. If you were to sail through it you would see nothing but miles and miles of pristine ocean. A recent survey estimates the density of garbage at 5.1 kilograms per square kilometer. That's 0.0051 grams per square meter. For reference, a pinch of salt weighs about 1 gram. The amount of garbage per square meter (slightly more than 3 x 3 feet) is about 196 times smaller than a pinch of salt. You would have to collect hundreds of gallons of water and spin it in a centrifuge to be able to strain out a few grams of garbage.
As toddzrx points out, there are all kinds of microbes in the oceans that feed on microscopic garbage, even ones that east plastic. See, for example, here:
http://phys.org/news/2016-03-newly-bacteria-plastic-bottles.html
You're welcome, VirtualGathis.
For more on the myth of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch:
http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/19/the-garbage-philosophy-behind-the-great-pacific-garbage-patch-myth/
Or search Wikipedia for Great Pacific garbage patch.

This would be all fine and dandy, if it weren't the fact it doesn't exist. http://www.snopes.com/great-pacific-garbage-patch/
signed, techmanmacho

Should be a really boring flight since you can't actually see the garbage. From Wikipedia:
"Most debris consists of small plastic particles suspended at or just below the surface, making it impossible to detect by aircraft or satellite"

If you put your fingers in your ears all the time, sure, you can believe that all the plastics in the ocean and the problem will magically disappear by itself over time. The reality however, is that the damage it does is on such a stupidly big scale that you would be a fool to ignore or dismiss it.