How Many Animals Have Died From The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The Sea'southward Biggest Garbage Pile Is Full of Floating Life
Researchers establish that minor sea creatures exist in equal number with pieces of plastic in parts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which could have implications for cleaning upwardly sea pollution.
In 2019, the French swimmer Benoit Lecomte swam over 300 nautical miles through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to heighten awareness about marine plastic pollution.
Equally he swam, he was often surprised to discover that he wasn't alone.
"Every time I saw plastic droppings floating, there was life all effectually it," Mr. Lecomte said.
The patch was less a garbage island than a garbage soup of plastic bottles, fishing nets, tires and toothbrushes. And floating at its surface were bluish dragon nudibranchs, Portuguese man-o-wars, and other pocket-size surface-dwelling animals, which are collectively known as neuston.
Scientists aboard the ship supporting Mr. Lecomte's swim systematically sampled the patch's surface waters. The squad found that there were much higher concentrations of neuston within the patch than exterior information technology. In some parts of the patch, there were nearly as many neuston as pieces of plastic.
"I had this hypothesis that gyres concentrate life and plastic in similar ways, only it was still really surprising to see merely how much we found out there," said Rebecca Helm, an assistant professor at the University of Northward Carolina and co-author of the study. "The density was really staggering. To meet them in that concentration was like, wow."
The findings were posted last month on bioRxiv and have non yet been subjected to peer review. But if they hold upwardly, Dr. Helm and other scientists say, it may complicate efforts past conservationists to remove the immense and e'er-growing amount of plastic in the patch.
The globe'due south oceans contain five gyres, large systems of circular currents powered by global wind patterns and forces created by Earth'south rotation. They deed like enormous whirlpools, so anything floating inside i will somewhen be pulled into its center. For nearly a century, floating plastic waste has been pouring into the gyres, creating an assortment of garbage patches. The largest, the Slap-up Pacific Patch, is halfway between Hawaii and California and contains at to the lowest degree 79,000 tons of plastic, co-ordinate to the Ocean Cleanup Foundation. But garbage isn't the only thing these gyres are gathering.
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Dr. Helm and her colleagues pulled many private creatures out of the sea with their nets: by-the-wind sailors, free-floating hydrozoans that travel on ocean breezes; blue buttons, quarter-sized cousins of the jellyfish; and violet sea-snails, which build "rafts" to stay adrift by trapping air bubbles in a lather-like fungus they secrete from a gland in their foot. They also found potential bear witness that these creatures may be reproducing within the patch.
"I wasn't surprised," said Andre Boustany, a researcher with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. "We know this place is an aggregation area for drifting plastics, so why would it not be an aggregation area for these drifting animals equally well?"
Little is known nearly neuston, especially those found far from land in the heart of body of water gyres.
"They are very hard to written report considering they occur in the open sea and you cannot collect them unless you proceed marine expeditions, which cost a lot of money," said Lanna Cheng, a enquiry scientist at the University of California, San Diego.
Considering so little is known about the life history and ecology of these creatures, this study, though severely express in size and scope, offers valuable insights to scientists.
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But Dr. Captain said in that location is some other implication of the report: Organizations working to remove plastic waste from the patch may also demand to consider what the study means for their efforts.
In that location are 2 nonprofit organizations working to remove floating plastic from the Great Pacific Patch. The largest, the Ocean Cleanup Foundation in the netherlands, adult a net specifically to collect and concentrate marine debris as it is pulled across the ocean's surface past winds and currents. Once the internet is full, a ship takes its contents to land for proper disposal.
Dr. Captain and other scientists warn that such nets threaten sea life, including neuston. Although adjustments to the net's design accept been fabricated to reduce bycatch, Dr. Helm believes any large-scale removal of plastic from the patch could pose a threat to its neuston inhabitants.
"When it comes to figuring out what to do about the plastic that'due south already in the ocean, I think we demand to be actually conscientious," she said. The results of her study "really emphasize the demand to study the open ocean earlier we try to dispense it, modify information technology, clean information technology up or excerpt minerals from it."
Laurent Lebreton, an oceanographer with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, disagreed with Dr. Helm.
"It'south also early to reach any conclusions on how we should react to that study," he said. "You lot have to accept into account the effects of plastic pollution on other species. We are collecting several tons of plastic every week with our system — plastic that is affecting the environment."
Plastic in the ocean poses a threat to marine life, killing more than than a 1000000 seabirds every twelvemonth, as well as more than than 100,000 marine mammals, according to UNESCO. Everything from fish to whales can go entangled, and animals often mistake it for food and end up starving to decease with stomachs full of plastic.
Body of water plastics that don't end up asphyxiating an albatross or entangling an elephant seal somewhen break down into microplastics, which penetrate every branch of the food web and are near incommunicable to remove from the surroundings.
One thing everyone agrees on is that we need to end the flow of plastic into the ocean.
"Nosotros demand to plough off the tap," Mr. Lecomte said.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/06/science/great-pacific-garbage-patch-pollution.html
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