This system of ocean currents forms the North Atlantic Gyre.

I then, in the last few years, learned about the Pacific garbage patch and the gyre.

The Sargasso Sea is a region in the gyre in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean.

In 2002, in the central Pacific gyre, there were found to be six kilograms (kg) of plastic for every kilogram of plankton near the surface.

The high pressure in the center is due to the westerly winds on the northern side of the gyre and easterly trade winds on the southern side.

Artist Dianna Cohen shares some tough truths about plastic pollution in the ocean and in our lives and some thoughts on how to free ourselves from the plastic gyre.

These happen to go down to a vast South Pacific Gyre, where they spend most of their time and often end up getting hooked like this, or as bycatch.

In samples taken from the North Pacific Gyre in 1999 by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, the mass of plastic exceeded that of zooplankton by a factor of six.

Perhaps even worse is when it finds its way into our oceans, like in the great plastic gyre, where these materials are being mechanically broken into smaller and smaller bits, but they're not really going away.

The term gyre can be used to refer to any type of vortex in the air or the sea, even one that is man made, but it is most commonly used in oceanography to refer to the major ocean systems.

And my intention was to go out to the gyre, raise awareness about this issue and begin to pick up the plastic, chip it into little bits and cold mold it into bricks that could potentially be used as building materials in underdeveloped communities.

And it ended up in the Boise River and then on to the Columbia River and then to the mouth of the Columbia and to the Pacific Ocean and then on to this place called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is this giant Pacific gyre in the North Pacific, where a lot of this plastic ends up floating around and then back onto the lagoon.