The " patch " is the product of the north pacific gyre , a loop of currents that picks up trash from the west coast of the united states and east asia and funnels it into an endless loop in the north pacific .
His team noticed that for any simulated location within the gyre , a few hatchlings consistently swam in directions that would take them out of the gyre and into dangerous waters .
But near the southern coast , most turtles swam south-west , even though swimming south would have kept them in the gyre .
但在(模拟的)南部海域,虽然向南游会让它们继续留在环流中,但大多数海龟却游往西南方向。
When the saltier , denser agulhas current water reaches the tip of south africa , most of it curls back eastward in the big indian ocean subtropical gyre , but some of it " leaks " across the tip of south africa .
Hatchlings emerge from their nests on the florida coast and head for the open ocean . Here they spend six to 12 years in a circular current called the north atlantic subtropical gyre before returning to the north american coast to breed .
This moved a lot of ice from the beaufort gyre , a revolving current in the western arctic , to the ocean 's other main current , the transpolar drift stream , which runs down the side of siberia .
Much of the plastic swirling around the sea ends up in the north pacific gyre , where four great ocean currents meet to create a swirl of water moving clockwise that is twice the size of the united states .
Vast currents and winds push the ice around the ocean , some of it remaining trapped in the huge beaufort gyre off the coast of alaska , where it ages and thickens , and some being spat out between greenland and siberia in the great transpolar drift stream .