Ben Lecomte is swimming through tons of plastic. Pieces of it have gotten stuck to his face. Hes passed abandoned fishing nets that tangle and kill wildlife. Hes held pieces of broken storage crates blooming with algae and barnacles. And he wants us to see it all so we know what weve done to the planet.

In June, the athlete and environmental advocate embarked on a swim through a highly polluted stretch between Hawaii and California. By September, he hopes to traverse 300 nautical miles of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch , the worlds largest accumulation of marine plastic debris. Its an area thats not well understood, despite recent media attention to the growing problem of plastic waste .