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From the story: "The pieces of plastic are not necessarily floating bottles, bags, and buoys, but teeny-tiny pieces of plastic resembling confetti...These microplastic particles may not be visible floating on the surface, but in this case, they were detected after collecting water samples..."

So, photos probably wouldn't help much.

A density graph of the Pacific Ocean showing plastic particulate count measured at various points, with the gaps filled in using gradients, would be stellar here.

But the article would lose all clickbaitiness.

Not good when the website that hosts it relied on page view and ads to make a profit !

EDIT : National geographic isn't an offender for clickbait.

There's nothing to see. The plastic tends to be very small. This is partly because of the source (acrylic fibres from clothing; microbreads from cosmetics) and because the UV in sunlight, and the waves, break up larger bits of plastic.

For the other patches:

> 200,000 pieces per square kilometer in the North Atlantic garbage patch.

> 4 particles per cubic meter in the Great Pacific garbage patch.

This is more than the amount of food in some places, and it's a real problem and needs to be fixed. But it's not something you can see.

If it had photos, it would look just like the rest of the ocean.