There’s nothing misleading about the headline, as your TL;DR negates nothing in the headline nor the article. Making a bunch of assumptions, which later turn out to be wrong, does not make the headline misleading. If you’d like to argue that there is, in fact, no garbage patch at all, fine. But just because you assumed that you could see it, when in fact you can’t, doesn’t mean the headline is wrong.
According to the NOAA (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html)
"The name "Pacific Garbage Patch" has led many to believe that this area is a large and continuous patch of easily visible marine debris items such as bottles and other litter—akin to a literal island of trash that should be visible with satellite or aerial photographs. This is not the case.".
I think this is a case of insufficient nomenclature. Do we have more appropriate wording that doesn't negate it's usefulness in correctness by being too lengthy?
It also somewhat loses in impact because it's not immediately obvious that it's because of sea pollution, which "garbage" does a good job of conveying. You get there through some (admittedly short) reasoning, but that's probably what they were trying to avoid.
