Trash is accumulating in a massive garbage patch in the Atlantic Ocean -- just like the more well-known Texas-size trash vortex in the Pacific.

The newly described garbage patch sits hundreds of miles off the North American coast. The patch covers a region between 22 and 38 degrees north latitude. As with the Pacific garbage patch, plastic can circulate in this part of the Atlantic Ocean for years, posing health risks to fish, seabirds, and other marine animals that accidentally eat the litter.

In some places, investigators found more than 520,000 bits of trash per square mile. The vast majority comes from consumer products that were blown out of open landfills or were tossed out by litterbugs.