Plastic On The Ocean Floor

In your home your office your school and your ocean.

Plastic on the ocean floor.

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. 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. This graphic shows several ocean floor features on a scale from 0 35 000 feet below sea level. 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.

At least 14 million tonnes of plastic parts less than 5mm wide are likely to be found at the bottom of the world s oceans according to an estimate based on new research analysis of ocean sediments as deep as 3 km suggests that there may be more than 30 times more plastic at the bottom of the world s ocean than there is floating on the surface. The following features are shown at example depths to scale though each feature has a considerable range at which it may occur. The new study printed on monday by the commonwealth scientific and industrial analysis group or c s i r o in. 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 norwegian environment agency is calling for several measures to combat the problem of plastics in the oceans. 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. Plastic ends up on the ocean floor according to a new research report most plastic fragments end up on the ocean floor.