A recent study reveals that there is as much as 40,000 tons of floating plastic debris in the Earth's oceans.
According to Andres Cozar of the University of Cadiz in Spain, who is an author of the study, the 40,000 tons of floating debris is far less than the figure of 1 million tons he had previosuly thought. The National Academy of Sciences predicted that about 45,000 tons of plastic reached the ocean every year since 1970's. However, as plastic production increased the amount of plastic that reached the oceans should have been more.
"A conservative first-order estimate of the floating plastic released into the open ocean from the 1970s (10^6 tons) is 100-fold larger than our estimate of the current load of plastic stored in the ocean," says Cozar. "Large loads of plastic fragments with sizes from microns to some millimeters are unaccounted for in the surface loads. The pathway and ultimate fate of the missing plastic are as yet unknown."
An international team of scientists conducted the study on a research ship that collected samples from various parts of the Earth. The researchers suggest that the latest study only highlights the floating plastic debris and not include the plastic, which may lie on or under the ocean floor.
The study also highlights the areas, estimated by ocean current patterns, which have the highest concentration plastic. The areas include: North Pacific Ocean, which is estimated to have around 35 percent of the overall plastic waste in oceans, Southern Indian Ocean and North and South of the Atlantic Ocean.
The researchers say that the plastic make way to the oceans by storm water runoff. The study indicates that the samples obtained from various parts of the ocean around the world were very small and measured less than quarter of an inch. The researchers suggest that the sample of plastic collected from the oceans were less than previous estimates byscientists. The researchers believe that smaller plastic particles may have been eaten by fish, which could have mistaken them for plankton.
Kara Lavender Law, a researcher who studies plastic pollution at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, says that the current study gives an estimate of floating plastic debris in the oceans. The study may play an important role and take as a base for other future research work.
Researchers are able to estimate the amount of plastic that makes its way to the oceans; however, the impact of the waste plastic on marine life is an area of research that many scientists may explore in the near term.
