Humans seem to leave their mark almost everywhere they go. It also seems they leave their mark on places which have never been visited before.

In the Pacific Ocean, researchers found a tiny remote island covered in trash. They estimated that the island had about 38 million pieces of trash covering it and that the ecosystem had adapted to it. There were photos of crabs using plastic bottles and caps as shells. They were also using the trash piles as homes.Connor Hughes, junior, said, “It’s crazy to hear that the animals have gotten used to the trash and are starting to use it to help them survive.”

The island is called Henderson Island and is a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) heritage site. They claim this small island has the highest trash density of any other place on the planet. They claim that the island, which is six miles long and three miles wide, has about thirteen thousand pieces of trash wash up on its shores every day.

Researchers say the reason for this absurd amount of trash is because the island is located next to a vortex of ocean currents called the South Pacific Gyre. This area of the ocean seems to capture most of the trash in the ocean, which causes most of it to wash up on the shores of islands located in the area. Josh Docherty, senior, said, “It’s crazy to hear that, and it’s hard to imagine that much garbage being on one small island. I hope it gets cleaned up, and I hope this shows that we need to be careful where we throw away our garbage.”
A clean up operation would be very difficult, though. The island is located in between New Zealand and Chile and is extremely remote. Getting to the island takes a few days, and no one knows how long it could take to clean up that much garbage so far away from civilization.