Litter The Ocean Floor

Eight million tonnes of plastic are going into the ocean each year.

Litter the ocean floor.

Much of the litter is harmless but some of it is responsible for marine mammal deaths. This is why the european union funded seaclear project is focussing on cleaning up the ocean floor. When plastic breaks down in the ocean the toxins are released in the water. This is an increase from the 1 863 838 butts collected around the world in 2016.

The world s seafloor is littered with an estimated 14 million tonnes of microplastics broken down from the masses of rubbish entering the oceans every year according to australia s national science agency. Although recent research has shown that marine litter has made it even to the remotest parts of our planet little information is available about temporal trends on the deep ocean floor. The ocean conservancy s 2018 international coastal cleanup report stated that 2 412 151 cigarette butts were collected worldwide in 2017. To quantify litter on the deep seafloor over time we analysed images from the hausgarten observatory 79 n taken in 2002 2004 2007 2008 and 2011 2500 m.

An orange peel can take up to 2 years to fully break down an aluminum can up to 80 years. The world s sea floor is littered with an estimated 14 million tonnes of microplastics broken down from the masses of rubbish entering the oceans every year according to australia s. Albatross parents who forage for food on the ocean surface skim up floating bits of plastic by mistake. Much of it degrades very slowly.

But what s it got to do with you more than you might think. It takes a very long time for trash especially plastic to break down when it s in the ocean. Seals and otters for example which feed on fish crabs and sea urchins on the sea floor are frequent casualties. Agence france presse oct 07 2020 12 27 24 ist.

The photo comes from midway atoll national wildlife refuge in the pacific where seaborne trash is impacting the world s largest albatross colony. Turtles mistake floating plastic for jellyfish and globally around one third of all turtles are estimated to have eaten plastic in some form. The effects of ocean litter have a direct impact on the environment. Its scarcity explains why until today only a single excavation of pacific ocean crust in 1999 had yielded enough evidence to support the occurrence of a recent supernova from 2 8 million years ago.

The project plans to use autonomous vehicles to find and collect litter from the seabed focusing on coastal areas where waste inflow concentrates.