The 46% is only the nets, the title is absolutely true if left as it was.

“The study also found that fishing nets account for 46 percent of the trash, with the majority of the rest composed of other fishing industry gear, including ropes, oyster spacers, eel traps, crates, and baskets.”

Yeah, when you read the article it's clear they mean it's in the plurality. In a title it's ambiguous without the context, but not overly deceptive.

It's not downplaying it, it's only stating that claims of its being "the size of Texas" and "you can see it from space" are exaggerated.

But it's also saying that "the 79,000 tons was four to 16 times larger than has been previously estimated for the patch."

The title is clickbait so we changed it, in accordance with the site guidelines, to the subtitle. But we can take out "mostly" if that bit is misleading.