Joel Paschal, a crewman aboard the California-based marine research vessel Alguita, spent the past seven weeks sailing through a floating trash dump.

"We're analyzing the (marine life) samples and looking in their stomachs to see which fish really eat plastic," said Paschal, 33, of Waikiki. "This time, we saw mahimahi with plastic in the stomach. That was the first time we'd ever seen that."

The Alguita is in Honolulu following a survey trip through what has become known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a band of floating trash north of Hawai'i. Swept loosely together by ocean currents, the patch has been estimated by some scientists to be twice the size of Texas.

"Most people think it's an island that you can just walk across, but it's more of a diluted trash soup," Paschal said.

Alguita skipper Charlie Moore said, "It's dispersed, not like a landfill on land. Things that are neutrally buoyant are going to settle down and you see them slightly submerged or bobbing at the surface."

Moore is the person credited with "discovering" the Great Pacific Garbage Patch while sailing from California to Hawai'i in the 1997 Transpac yacht race.

That led him to found the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, a Long Beach, Calif.-based nonprofit marine research and education organization.

Moore and his crew on the catamaran Alguita went on the recent seven-week trip through the garbage patch to collect data and raise awareness about the pervasiveness of man-made marine debris, particularly plastics.

Crewwoman Nicole Chatterson, 23, a recent graduate of Long Beach State University, said, "Some days (the water) was very dense with debris, (and) some days you don't see anything. It isn't until you dip the net in and you trawl. Then you realize how many tiny pieces of plastic there are that you can't see above the surface."

One of Chatterson's tasks was to sit on the bow with a stopwatch and count how many pieces of plastic floated by in the course of 10 minutes.

"The record was 107 pieces of plastic. That means that there are 10 pieces floating by per minute," Chatterson said. "I was seeing more pieces of plastic come by than zooplankton (larger than one-third of a millimeter), which is the base of the food chain. This means that fish feeding out there have more chance of eating plastic than eating any zooplankton."

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is gaining attention, Moore said, "because people are starting to see it on land. We have too much stuff and too much trash. Reduce the junk in your life. Reducing is key."

Moore and his crew said a significant share of marine debris is plastic, and suggest eliminating plastic water bottles and plastic shopping bags to reduce the source of the pollution.

Other groups doing research and trying to raise awareness of the garbage patch include the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Kaisei Project, which is made of up scientists, environmentalists, ocean lovers, sailors, sports enthusiasts and others.

Scripps, along with ocean conservationist Doug Woodring, will sail through the garbage patch hoping to examine it and bring back pictures and video to help raise awareness. The Kaisei Project will capture the debris and study it in hopes of turning it into diesel fuel.