AFP - Getty Images, file

British female adventurer Sarah Outen sits in the narrow cabin of her rowing boat "Gulliver" in a suburb of Tokyo, April 11, 2012, before heading across the Pacific to Canada.

Updated at 5:50 p.m. ET: A 27-year-old woman trying to row solo across the Pacific Ocean was “holding on” hoping for rescue after her 23-foot boat was hit by a tropical storm.

The storm, named Mawar, rolled Sarah Outen’s boat Gulliver several times, damaging the vessel, according to her blog. A Japanese Coast Guard plane was staying overhead “to keep an eye on Sarah” while a Coast Guard boat went to pick her up. It was expected to arrive Friday.

As the storm hit Wednesday, Outen, from Rutland, England, said on her Twitter account that she had “written ‘SMILE’ on one hand and ‘BREATHE’ on the other. Both will help when I am scared in the storm.”

At about 9:50 a.m. ET Thursday, she wrote her cabin was soaked and she was now “wrapped in Union Jack [British flag] in place of soggy” sleeping bag and “holding on.”

On her blog, London 2 London via the World, her support team wrote they had spoken to her and she was “safe and doing well.”

Outen’s Pacific row was just one leg of a planned round-the-world journey by bicycle, rowing boat, and kayak that started on April 1 last year.

Fellow British Rower Charlie Martell was also awaiting rescue in his boat Blossom, the London 2 London website said in an update Thursday. Martell is approximately 280 miles northeast of Outen. The Japanese Coast Guard was keeping an eye on him, too.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• UN: Monitors shot at trying to reach Syria 'massacre' village
• London's hipsters embrace the original creative, Shakespeare, after rare theater find
• Elderly Italian arrested over deadly school bomb
• Manhunt for Greek lawmaker who hit female rival on live television
• Report: Egypt's Mubarak in declining health
• Mexican presidential candidate becomes poster boy for infidelity

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

Mario Aguilera / Scripps Institution of Oceanography

SEAPLEX researchers encounter a large ghost net with tangled rope, net, plastic, and various biological organisms during a 2009 expedition in the Pacific gyre. Matt Durham (seen wearing a blue shirt) is pictured with Miriam Goldstein.

The amount of plastic trash in the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" has increased 100-fold during the past 40 years, causing "profound" changes to the marine environment, according to a new study.

Scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego found that insects called "sea skaters" or "water striders" were using the trash as a place to lay their eggs in greater numbers than before.

In a paper published by the journal Biology Letters, researchers said this would have implications for other animals, the sea skaters' predators -- which include crabs --  and their food, which is mainly plankton and fish eggs.

The scientists also pointed to a previous Scripps study that found nine percent of fish had plastic waste in their stomachs.

The "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" -- which is roughly the size of Texas -- was created by plastic waste that finds its way into the sea and is then swept into one area, the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone, by circulating ocean currents known as a gyre.

NOAA

This map shows the North Pacific Subtropical Convergence Zone within the North Pacific Gyre.

The Scripps Environmental Accumulation of Plastic Expedition, known as SEAPLEX, traveled about 1,000 miles west of California in August 2009.

A statement on Scripps' website said the scientists had "documented an alarming amount of human-generated trash, mostly broken down bits of plastic the size of a fingernail floating across thousands of miles of open ocean."

Scripps graduate student Miriam Goldstein, SEAPLEX’s chief scientist, said that plastic had arrived in the ocean in such numbers in a "relatively short" period.

"Plastic only became widespread in late '40s and early '50s, but now everyone uses it and over a 40-year range we've seen a dramatic increase in ocean plastic," she said. "Historically we have not been very good at stopping plastic from getting into the ocean so hopefully in the future we can do better." 

Jim Leichter / Scripps Institution of Oceanogra

Researchers found fish larvae growing on pieces of plastic, such as the one above.

Sea skaters -- relatives of pond water skaters -- normally lay their eggs on flotsam such as seashells, seabird feathers, tar lumps and pumice. The sharp rise in plastic waste had led to an increase in egg densities in the gyre area, the study found.

"We're seeing changes in this marine insect that can be directly attributed to the plastic," Goldstein said in a statement.

She told BBC News that the addition of "hundreds of millions of hard surfaces" to the Pacific was "quite a profound change."

Samples taken by the scientists showed how marine life, such as small velella pictured above, lives alongside pieces of plastic.

"In the North Pacific, for example, there's no floating seaweed like there is in the Sargasso Sea in the North Atlantic. And we know that the animals, the plants and the microbes that live on hard surfaces are different to the ones that live floating around in the water," she added.

A garbage patch has also been found in the Atlantic Ocean, lying a few hundreds miles off the North American coast from Cuba to Virginia.

Oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer, who said he coined the phrase the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch," told msnbc.com by phone that the only solution was to switch to using biodegradable plastic and let the plastic gradually disperse.

"We can't clean it up. It's just too big. You'd have to have the entire U.S. Navy out there, round the clock, continuously towing little nets. And it's produced so fast, they wouldn't be able to keep up," he said.

Ebbesmeyer said in 10,000 years scientists might find a layer of plastic in the ground and use this as evidence of "the plastic people."

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Study: Plastic in 'Great Pacific Garbage Patch' increases 100-fold
• US charity's gift to UK troops: $2 million for 'sanctuary'
• $868K mystery: Nigeria stock exchange's yacht, Rolexes vanish
• UK jails 9 members of sex gang who 'shared' teen girls
• Heathrow chaos: Travelers spend longer in line than on jets
• Leak hits Shell Nigeria pipeline at center of environmental case
• Story of vengeful jilted dentist WAS too good to be true
• Poll: Most Egyptians think US aid billions have 'negative effect'
• London jogger: Dustin Hoffman 'saved my life'

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world