Islands of Trash!

So many of you might have heard of the great big garbage patch in the middle of the Pacific ocean, right? It is made up primarily of tiny bits of plastic and was formed by ocean currents (and trash dumped in the sea).

This evening I read an article about the torrential rains in China that shut down the shipping locks at the Three Gorges Dam last week and how now the upstream flow has washed in "islands of trash!"
Here is the link to the article but the most impressive (or worrying) part is not that these islands are incredibly tiny compared to the Pacific Ocean patch but rather that they can be walked on!!!