Researchers set sail for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Hoping to learn more about one of the most glaring examples of waste and environmental pollution on earth, a group of scientists will set sail from San Francisco today to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a massive vortex of floating plastic trash estimated by some researchers to be twice the size of Texas.

The bobbing debris field, where currents swirl everything from discarded fishing line to plastic bottles into one soupy mess, is located about 1,000 miles west of California.

"This is a problem that is kind of out of sight, out of mind, but it is having devastating impacts on the ocean. I felt we needed to do something about it," said Mary Crowley, co-founder of Project Kaisei, a nonprofit expedition that is partnering on the voyage with the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla.