Plastic debris in the open ocean
Andrés Cózar,Fidel Echevarría,J. Ignacio González-Gordillo,Xabier Irigoien,Bárbara Úbeda,Santiago Hernández-León,Alvaro T. Palma,Sandra Navarro,Juan García-de-Lomas,Andrea Ruiz,María L. Fernández-de-Puelles,Carlos M. Duarte +11 more
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TLDR
Using data from the Malaspina 2010 circumnavigation, regional surveys, and previously published reports, this work shows a worldwide distribution of plastic on the surface of the open ocean, mostly accumulating in the convergence zones of each of the five subtropical gyres with comparable density.Abstract:
There is a rising concern regarding the accumulation of floating plastic debris in the open ocean. However, the magnitude and the fate of this pollution are still open questions. Using data from the Malaspina 2010 circumnavigation, regional surveys, and previously published reports, we show a worldwide distribution of plastic on the surface of the open ocean, mostly accumulating in the convergence zones of each of the five subtropical gyres with comparable density. However, the global load of plastic on the open ocean surface was estimated to be on the order of tens of thousands of tons, far less than expected. Our observations of the size distribution of floating plastic debris point at important size-selective sinks removing millimeter-sized fragments of floating plastic on a large scale. This sink may involve a combination of fast nano-fragmentation of the microplastic into particles of microns or smaller, their transference to the ocean interior by food webs and ballasting processes, and processes yet to be discovered. Resolving the fate of the missing plastic debris is of fundamental importance to determine the nature and significance of the impacts of plastic pollution in the ocean.read more
Citations
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Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean
Jenna Jambeck,Roland Geyer,Chris Wilcox,Theodore R. Siegler,Miriam E. Perryman,Anthony L. Andrady,Ramani Narayan,Kara Lavender Law +7 more
TL;DR: This work combines available data on solid waste with a model that uses population density and economic status to estimate the amount of land-based plastic waste entering the ocean, which is estimated to be 275 million metric tons.
Supplementary Materials for Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean
Jenna Jambeck,Roland Geyer,Chris Wilcox,Theodore R. Siegler,Anthony L. Andrady,Ramani Narayan,Kara Lavender Law +6 more
Journal ArticleDOI
Plastic Pollution in the World's Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea
Marcus Eriksen,Laurent Lebreton,Henry S. Carson,Martin Thiel,Charles J. Moore,Jose C. Borerro,François Galgani,Peter G. Ryan,Julia Reisser +8 more
TL;DR: The total number of plastic particles and their weight floating in the world's oceans is estimated from 24 expeditions across all five sub-tropical gyres, costal Australia, Bay of Bengal and the Mediterranean Sea conducting surface net tows and visual survey transects of large plastic debris.
Journal ArticleDOI
River plastic emissions to the world's oceans.
Laurent Lebreton,Joost Van Der Zwet,Jan Willem Damsteeg,Boyan Slat,Anthony L. Andrady,Julia Reisser +5 more
TL;DR: A global model of plastic inputs from rivers into oceans based on waste management, population density and hydrological information is presented to provide baseline data for ocean plastic mass balance exercises, and assist in prioritizing future plastic debris monitoring and mitigation strategies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Microplastics in freshwater and terrestrial environments: Evaluating the current understanding to identify the knowledge gaps and future research priorities.
TL;DR: This review critically evaluates the current literature on the presence, behaviour and fate of microplastics in freshwater and terrestrial environments and, where appropriate, draws on relevant studies from other fields including nanotechnology, agriculture and waste management.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Plastic pollution in the South Pacific subtropical gyre
Marcus Eriksen,Nikolai Maximenko,Martin Thiel,Anna Cummins,Gwen Lattin,Stiv Wilson,Jan Hafner,A.F. Zellers,Samuel Rifman +8 more
TL;DR: A transect through the South Pacific subtropical gyre carried out in March-April 2011 bisected a predicted accumulation zone associated with the convergence of surface currents, driven by local winds, showing an increase in surface abundance of plastic pollution as the authors neared the center and decrease as they moved away, verifying the presence of a garbage patch.
Journal ArticleDOI
The effect of wind mixing on the vertical distribution of buoyant plastic debris
Tobias Kukulka,Giora Proskurowski,Giora Proskurowski,Skye Morét-Ferguson,D. Meyer,D. Meyer,Kara Lavender Law +6 more
TL;DR: Based on profile observations and a one-dimensional column model, Wang et al. as mentioned in this paper demonstrate that plastic debris is vertically distributed within the upper water column due to wind-driven mixing, which suggests that total oceanic plastics concentrations are significantly underestimated by traditional surface measurements, requiring a reinterpretation of existing plastic marine debris data sets.
The size, mass, and composition of plastic debris in the western North
Skye Morét-Ferguson,Kara Lavender Law,Giora Proskurowski,Ellen K. Murphy,Emily E. Peacock,Christopher M. Reddy +5 more
TL;DR: The first inventory of physical properties of individual plastic debris in the North Atlantic has been reported in this paper, where the authors analyzed 748 samples for size, mass, and material composition collected from surface net tows on 11 expeditions from Cape Cod, Massachusetts to the Caribbean Sea between 1991 and 2007.
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Origins and biological accumulation of small plastic particles in fur seals from Macquarie Island.
Cecilia Eriksson,Harry R. Burton +1 more
TL;DR: It is hypothesized that the plastic particles recovered from the scats of fur seals on Macquarie Island were washed out to sea and then selected by size and consumed by individuals of a pelagic fish species, Electrona subaspera, who in turn were consumed by the fur seals.
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Distribution of surface plastic debris in the eastern Pacific Ocean from an 11-year data set.
Kara Lavender Law,Skye Morét-Ferguson,Deborah S. Goodwin,Erik R. Zettler,Emelia A. DeForce,Tobias Kukulka,Giora Proskurowski,Giora Proskurowski +7 more
TL;DR: An accumulation zone is defined in the North Pacific subtropical gyre that closely corresponds to centers of accumulation resulting from the convergence of ocean surface currents predicted by several oceanographic numerical models.