Researchers from the University of Cádiz in Spain find fragments of plastic in the Arctic ocean which brings plastic pollution to the ocean.
A study published Wednesday in Science Advances, a group of researchers from the University of Cádiz in Spain and other institutions that show a major ocean current is carrying fragments of plastics.
Plastics that are coming from the North Atlantic to the Greenland and Barents seas which are leaving them in surface waters including the sea ice which could also mean it is possibly leaving them on the ocean floor.
Researchers tested floating plastic debris from 42 sites in the Arctic ocean abroad Tara, the research vessel. They scooped up plastic debris and determined the concentration by dividing the dry weight of the plastic collected.
All plastic that was measured by weight was in fragments which ranged from 0.5 millimeters to 12.6 millimeters. Researchers did not find plastics in large pieces. Some of the fragments of the plastics appeared in fish line, film and pellets and the mix of plastic types was consistent with the kinds of plastic, high concentration of fishing line, found in the subtropical gyres
Leading researcher of the study and professor biology at the University of Cádiz , Andrés Cózar Cabañas, states he is surprised with the results and worried about possible outcomes. He says there is no full understanding of the consequences of having plastic in the ocean but what is known is that it will have a great scale impact in the ecosystem.
Every year eight million tons of plastics gets into the ocean and scientists have estimated there may be as much as 110 million tons of plastic trash in the ocean. Plastic pollution that has made it into the food chain of the ecosystem of the oceans.
The ocean is littered with trillions of pieces of plastics such as bags, toys, bottles and fishing nets which are present in tiny particles making its way to the Arctic. With climate change, the arctic ice is shrinking which makes it possible for more human activity in an isolated area of the world to increase as navigation becomes easier.
Cabañas says the issue of the plastic pollution is something that requires international agreements but he also states that the plastic found in the Arctic is from North Atlantic and the more its known about what is happening in the Arctic the better chance there is to solve the problem of plastic pollution.
