Island of plastic debris in Pacific far bigger than previously thought

23/3/2018 11:17

        A giant
        island of plastic floating in the Pacific Ocean holds as much as
        16 times more debris than was previously thought, posing a
        significant threat to the food chain, scientists said on
        Thursday.
        
        The so-called garbage patch in waters between California and
        Hawaii consists of fishing nets, plastic containers, packaging
        and ropes, said the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, which headed up a
        study published in Scientific Reports, an online journal.
        
        The research using aerial images revealed the mass of trash
        is much denser - as much as 16 times more dense - than had
        previously been estimated, the study said.
        
        "It's shocking," said Joost Dubois, a spokesman for the
        Netherlands-based Ocean Cleanup Foundation, which led the team
        of researchers from seven countries.
        
        Nearly 200 nations late last year signed a United Nations
        resolution to eliminate plastic pollution in the sea, a move
        some hope will pave the way to a legally binding treaty.
        
        The new research estimates the accumulation is 79,000 metric
        tons - 1.8 trillion pieces - of plastic. Most of those pieces
        are tiny microplastics, it said.
        
        In another way of describing its size, Joost said it is made
        up of enough trash to fill 500 jumbo jets.
        
        The plastic has accumulated into a mass due to currents,
        scientists say. The research studied a patch of more than
        600,000 square miles (1.6 million square kilometers) of the
        ocean.
        
        A petroleum-based product, plastic disintegrates slowly, and
        one item pulled from the patch was about 40 years old, they
        said.
        
        It harms marine life by killing creatures such as turtles
        and dolphins that ingest it, and it harms humans by entering the
        food chain in the form of microplastics, said Dubois.
        
        "We're basically poisoning our own food, especially for
        those of us relying on fish for our diet," Dubois said.