The Plastic Islands

A wealthy yachtsman turned environmentalist captains an expedition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the enormous island of plastic garbage swept seaward from the Americas and Asia. The eccentric mates of The Argus, of researchers and a newswoman documenting the voyage, are chronicled by a science reporter, who finds her African-American heritage a chance balance between its white crew, and the Central Americans who man the ship. But the voyage transforms into an odyssey more bizarre than scientific. The crew confronts a conceptual artist's huge construction of plastic islands, the e-waste dumps of China, Pacific pirates led by a Somali bred in Africa's own garbage wastelands, and the possibility that in midocean the degraded plastic of humanity becomes something menacing beyond the inanimate.