The South Pacific Gyre, like its northern counterpart, is one of the largest ecosystems on Earth with an area that accounts for around 10% of the global ocean surface area. Within this massive area is Point Nemo, the location on Earth that is farthest away from all continental landmass (2,688 km away from the closest land). The remoteness of this gyre complicates sampling, causing this gyre to be historically under sampled in oceanographic datasets. At the northern boundary of the South Pacific Gyre, the South Equatorial Current flows west towards southeast Asia and Australia. There, it turns south as it flows in the East Australian Current, a western boundary current. The Antarctic Circumpolar Current again returns the water to the east. The flow turns north along the western coast of South America in the Humboldt Current, the eastern boundary current that completes the South Pacific Gyre circulation. Like the North Pacific Gyre, the South Pacific Gyre has an elevated concentration of plastic waste near the center, termed the South Pacific garbage patch. Unlike the North Pacific garbage patch which was first described in 1988, the South Pacific garbage patch was discovered much more recently in 2016 (a testament to the extreme remoteness of the South Pacific Gyre).