On average, every minute a full garbage truck full of plastic ends up in the world’s oceans and floats in the water. However, much of it also sinks into the depths: more than half of the estimated plastic mass in the oceans may have been deposited at depth, according to a new study.
In total, it is estimated that there are already three to eleven million tons of plastic waste on the ocean floor, according to a study by the Australian science agency CSIRO and the Canadian University of Toronto.
For the first time, remotely operated underwater vehicles (ROVs) have been used to roughly quantify how much plastic waste ends up on the seabed and where exactly it accumulates before being broken down into smaller pieces and mixed with marine sediment, says CSIRO researcher Denise Hardesty. .
“We know that millions of tons of plastic waste end up in our oceans every year, but what we didn’t know was how much of this pollution ends up on the seabed,” she explains. While there have been estimates of microplastics in the past, the new study looks at larger objects such as nets, cups or plastic bags.
Plastic consumption will double by 2040
With plastic consumption expected to double by 2040, understanding how and where plastic waste is transported in the ocean is critical to protecting marine ecosystems and wildlife, says the study, now published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers. .
Plastic pollution on the seafloor is estimated to be 100 times greater than the amount of plastic floating on the ocean’s surface, says Alice Zhu, a doctoral candidate at the University of Toronto who led the study. The ocean floor has thus become a long-term resting place or reservoir for much of the plastic pollution.
“This is further exacerbated by the extremely slow degradation of plastic in cold environments where both oxygen and UV radiation are lacking,” the study said. According to the results, almost half (46 percent) of the estimated plastic mass is located above a water depth of 200 meters, the rest (54 percent) in subsequent ocean depths up to 11,000 meters.
Source: Krone
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