Plastic On The Ocean Floor

Continental shelf 300 feet continental slope 300 10 000 feet abyssal plain 10 000 feet abyssal hill 3 000 feet up from the abyssal plain seamount 6 000 feet.

Plastic on the ocean floor.

The new research published in the journal royal society open science adds new details to earlier research that only discovered plastic bits in sea floor sediment in 2014. Among the top 10 kinds of trash picked up during the 2017 international coastal cleanup were food wrappers beverage bottles grocery bags straws and take out containers all made of plastic. If you extrapolated the results that would mean that in this location of the ocean floor there are 4 billion plastic fibers within one square kilometer an area less than a third of the size of. Plastic ends up on the ocean floor according to a new research report most plastic fragments end up on the ocean floor.

The accumulation of floating plastic accounts for less than 1 of the 10 million tons of plastic that enter the world s oceans each year according to research spearheaded by the university of. The harmful plastic debris has been pulled down by powerful deep sea currents that create microplastic hotspots a deep sea equivalent of so called garbage patches created by currents on the ocean. The new study printed on monday by the commonwealth scientific and industrial analysis group or c s i r o in. The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur.

There may be extra plastic embedded within the sea flooring 9 25 million to 15 87 million tons than floating on the ocean s floor researchers in australia have discovered in what a scientist referred to as the world s first estimate. But it fleshes out the. The norwegian environment agency is calling for several measures to combat the problem of plastics in the oceans. In your home your office your school and your ocean.