Life for larval fish was a crapshoot even before they met our plastic trash. Off Hawaii, a single eight-minute tow of the NOAA team’s net yields a plethora of living organisms and plastic.

There’s the plastic waste we can see—bottles, bags, discarded fishing nets, and all manner of other ... the impact these particles are having on fish, the food chain, and ultimately, us.

But now, the wait has grown long and the catch scarce. Six casts yields almost nothing; at best, a handful of small fish.

Dozens of birds and fish have died in a 400-meter-long stretch of abandoned fishing net. Marine volunteers had ... The most deadly form of marine plastic debris', between 500,000 and 1,000,000 ...