Plastic debris in the open ocean.

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

Department of Global Change Research, Instituto Mediterráneo de Estudios Avanzados (Universidad de las Islas Baleares-Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas), 07190 Esporles, Spain;The University of Western Australia Oceans Institute andSchool of Plant Biology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia; andFaculty of Marine Sciences, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah 21589, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Published: July 2014

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.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4104848PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1314705111DOI Listing

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