Environment

Highest Ever Level of Microplastics Found on Seafloor

An international research project has revealed the highest levels of microplastic ever recorded on the seafloor, with up to 1.9 million pieces in a thin layer covering just 1 square meter.

Over 10 million tons of plastic waste enters the oceans each year. Floating plastic waste at sea has caught the public’s interest thanks to the ‘Blue Planet Effect’ seeing moves to discourage the use of plastic drinking straws and carrier bags. Yet such accumulations account for less than 1% of the plastic that enters the world’s oceans.

The missing 99% is instead thought to occur in the deep ocean, but until now it has been unclear where it actually ended up.

Researchers have now found that microplastics are delivered to the ocean through rivers carrying industrial and domestic wastewater, carried down submarine canyons by powerful avalanches of sediment (turbidity currents) and then transported on the seafloor by ‘bottom currents’ and deposited in sediment drifts. Other microplastics sink from the ocean surface and can also be picked up and carried by bottom currents.

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