About nine million tons of visible plastic trash enter oceans each year—then there’s the waste we can’t see. This story appears in the May 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine.

along with heartbreaking images of its impact on everything from turtles to birds to whales, has generated a public outcry. But sunlight, wind, and waves eventually break down ocean plastic to ...

real life images of plastics in the oceans that have appeared in all corners of social media. No wonder this year's Earth Day theme focuses on Planet vs. Plastics. The message is clear ...

many end up as what scientists term microplastics — tiny chips of plastic less than five millimeters long. Just how big a problem is this? Scientists recently wanted to get a big-picture view ...

Dr Ian Kane, from the University of Manchester, who was recently part of a team that calculated the amount of micro-plastic in the seabed, described the picture the researchers had painted as ...

(Photo by ANDER GILLENEA / AFP) (Photo credit should read ANDER GILLENEA/AFP via Getty Images) When people tend to think of plastic pollution and the oceans, they usually think of discarded soda ...