(AP) — A crew has returned from the northernmost islands in the Hawaiian archipelago this week with a boatload of marine plastic and abandoned fishing nets that threaten to entangle endangered Hawaiian monk seals and other animals. The cleanup effort in the nation’s largest protected marine reserve lasted three weeks and the crew picked up more than 47 tons of “ghost nets” and other marine plastics. The uninhabited islands are in the northern Pacific Ocean and surrounded by what is known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a huge gyre of floating plastic and other debris that circulates in ocean currents.

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