Easter Island, the remote little piece of land in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, is caught in an oceanic plastic vortex. According to municipal data from Rapa Nui – the local name – this island receives about fifty times more plastics and microplastics than the coasts of Chile. This is largely due to its location in the South Pacific Gyre, which carries trash from Australia, South America and also from fishing boats. "The microplastic we find on the coasts is not ours," explains Moiko Pakomio, a marine biologist with the local government, who adds that worldwide the majority of microplastics come from fishing boats that dump their waste into the ocean. "This plastic waste decomposes as it travels through the currents and degrades until it becomes microplastics," she says.