It's been clear for decades that pieces of plastic garbage are swirling around on the surface of the ocean. But new experiments are showing that plastic may be getting down deeper than we thought.

Erica Cirino is a science writer based in New York who sailed to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch late last year with the Danish group Plastic Change. The 23-day trip was the last leg of a much longer journey that took the group to the Mediterranean, Caribbean, and around the Galapagos.

“It was the first time in the Pacific Ocean that scientists have gone down deeper than just the first few meters of the ocean to look for plastic,” Cirino told WCAI.