GLOBAL SCENES

Great Pacific Garbage Patch now three times the size of France A huge, swirling pile of trash in the Pacific Ocean is growing faster than expected and is now three times the size of France. According to a three-year study published in  Scientific Reports  Friday, the mass known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is about 1.6 million square kilometers in size -- up to 16 times bigger than previous estimates. Ghost nets, or discarded fishing nets, make up almost half the 80,000 metric tons of garbage floating at sea, and researchers believe that around 20% of the total volume of trash is debris from the 2011 Japanese tsunami. The study -- conducted by an international team of scientists with  The Ocean Cleanup Foundation , six universities and an aerial sensor company -- utilized two aircraft surveys and 30 vessels to cross the debris field.                                 ...