There’s far more plastic below the surface of the seas and oceans than on it
A shocking new study from researchers in Australia and Canada suggests that there could be 11 million tonnes of plastic on the ocean floor, up to 100 times the amount visible on the surface.
This study is the first ever estimate of exactly how much plastic there is at the bottom of the ocean. Generally, research has focused on floating plastic, accumulating on the surface in great agglomerations like the famous “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” which is twice the size of Texas, or washing up on beaches.
It’s now clear that ongoing efforts to rid the seas and oceans of plastic waste will be an even more complicated, and more costly endeavor than previously thought.
“We know that millions of tonnes of plastic waste enter our oceans every year but what we didn’t know is how much of this pollution ends up on our ocean floor,” noted one of the study’s principal researchers in a press statement.
“We discovered that the ocean floor has become a resting place, or reservoir, for most plastic pollution, with between 3 to 11 million tonnes of plastic estimated to be sinking to the ocean floor.
“While there has been a previous estimate of microplastics on the seafloor, this research looks at larger items, from nets and cups to plastic bags and everything in between.”
Researchers used two complicated predictive models to estimate the amounts of large items of plastic that reach the seafloor. One model used data taken from remote-operated vehicles, while the other used data taken from trawls of the ocean floor.
The results from the remote-operated vehicles showed that significant amounts of plastic cluster on the ocean floor near continents. Just under half (46%) of the plastic mass predicted using the models resides above 200 m depth. Deeper areas of the ocean, ranging between 200 and 11,000 meters, contain the remaining 54% of the predicted plastic mass.
The researchers believe the new research, by allowing us to see exactly where plastic accumulates, will help future attempts to reduce plastic pollution in the oceans.
There has been growing alarm in recent years about levels of plastic pollution, and in particular the effects of microplastic pollution.
More than nine billion tons of plastic are estimated to have been produced between 1950 and 2017, with over half of that total having been produced since 2004. The vast majority of plastic ends up in the environment, where it breaks down, through weathering, exposure to UV light and organisms of all kinds, into smaller and smaller pieces—microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics.
“Secondary” microplastics they start off big and end up small, but there’s a whole class of “primary” microplastics which are small by design, like so-called “microbeads” used in cosmetics.
Within our homes, microplastics are mainly produced when synthetic fibres from clothes, furnishings and carpets are shed. They accumulate in large quantities in dust and float around in the air, which we then inhale.
Microplastics have been found, variously, in mist, rainfall and snow. They are known to circulate on the wind. They have also been found in every human and animal tissue, from gut and lung tissue to the eyes, liver, brain, womb and placenta.
Studies are linking exposure to microplastics to virtually every one of the prevailing chronic diseases of modernity, from autism and alzheimer’s to Crohn’s disease and cancer.
If you want to protect yourself and your family against exposure to microplastics, read our primer, “The Microplastic Menace” now.
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