SAN DIEGO -- A scientific voyage to study an environmental situation off the Pacific coast pulled into San Diego Thursday with troubling findings.

The Kaisei recently finished a 3-and-a-half week expedition in the Pacific Ocean to study a huge debris field 1,000 miles off shore known as the Pacific Gyre.

While 10News has reported on the trash at sea before, scientists are continuing to make new discoveries.

"It was quite eye-opening getting out there and really seeing just the vastness of the problem," said chief scientist Nick Mallos.

The Kaisei brought back debris of every shape and size, everything from plastic containers to a metal refrigerant canister.

However, something new in the debris field this year is very troubling to scientists -- small fragments of plastic less than an inch in length.

"The large items are more feasible to clean up, but when you start thinking about how we're gonna approach these small micro-fragments, that's really where we really got to start thinking out of the box," said Mallos.

Lifelong sailor Mary Crowley heads Project Kaisei and this is the project's second year studying the Pacific Gyre. She said along with studying the problem, she and her group are also working on solutions.

"We have some designers working on ways we might be able to address getting some of them [small fragments] out of the ocean," said Crowley.

But as much as the scientists study, Crowley said all of citizens need to do their part to solve what is an ever-growing crisis for the ocean.

The main problem, she said, is plastic.

"The whole idea of using something for 30 seconds or a minute that you're going to throw away and it's going to last for 500 years, 700 years … we're going to be buried both at sea and ashore in our garbage if we don't figure out better ways to reuse, recycle and reduce," Crowley said.

The Kaisei will head out again in August of next year, and Mallos said the next frontier in studying pollution of the ocean is items that have fallen way below the surface.

Plastics emit carbon, so degrading plastic underwater could increase the problem of the world's oceans warming.