system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: if there's a garbage island the size of Texas in the Pacific Ocean, why can't I find it on google maps?

I started looking at the satellite images from google maps looking at small uninhabited islands and I realized that there wasn't a giant trash island like I had heard so much about.  So where is it?
gpt
It's not an island in the typical sense of a chunk of land you can walk on.

It's a region of the ocean with a larger than expected concentration of microscopic plastic particles.

The existence of this "island" is a problem because of it's size and it's risk to ocean life, but you could only realize you were even floating in it if you sampled the water around you and examined it closely.

Edit: It appears it isn't **always** microscopic pieces, according to some of the videos shown below.