A 'conveyor belt' of plastic is polluting the Arctic Ocean
Our plastic waste doesn't just stay put when it hits the oceans. Currents sweep it into the deep blue abyss, spreading the garbage far and wide. And much of that debris apparently winds up in the Arctic Ocean, a new study found.
Plastics are "abundant and widespread" in the seas east of Greenland and north of Scandinavia — areas that tend to have more polar bears and seals than people. Scientists encountered the pools of plastic during a 2013 expedition around the Arctic Polar Circle.
Led by Spanish biologist Andrés Cózar, the team hadn't expected to find such large accumulations of shopping bags, fishing lines, microbeads, and other plastic fragments, given how far the polar latitudes are from pollution-creating populations.
Their study reveals how far plastic can travel if not disposed of properly, "because once it enters the ocean, its destination can be unpredictable," the scientists wrote in the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.
"There is continuous transport of floating litter from the North Atlantic, and the Greenland and the Barents Seas act as a dead-end for this poleward conveyor belt of plastic," Cózar said in a news release.
Scientists from two global research efforts collaborated for the study, including the 2009-2014 Tara Oceans expedition team, based in France, and the 2010 Malaspina expedition team from Spain.
Around the world, humans dump an estimated 19.4 billion pounds of plastic waste into the ocean each year, according to a separate 2015 study.
Those bottles, jugs, threads, and scraps are visible in giant swirling "garbage patches" in the middle of the ocean, and even in trenches along the seafloor. The Mariana Trench -- the deepest spot on the planet, at 36,000 feet deep -- is lined with plastic bags and soda cans, videos from Japan's marine science agency show.
Plastic waste isn't just unsightly. Birds, fish, and other wildlife can eat it and choke. Fish also gobble up fragments of deteriorated plastic, which contain harmful chemicals that spread throughout the food chain.
During the 2013 circumpolar expedition, Cózar and his colleagues used nets to collect floating plastic debris.
They found that most of the ice-free surface waters in the Arctic Polar Circle were only slightly polluted. But far more plastic debris had accumulated in the Greenland and Barents Sea. They estimated hundreds of tons of plastic fragments bobbing in the surface waters there, with even more plastic likely piling up on the seafloor below.
Using 17,000 satellite buoys, the team followed a "pathway of plastic" in the North Atlantic Ocean. Data-transmitting devices confirmed the pollution is flowing toward the pole via the "thermohaline circulation," a current that's known as the global ocean conveyer belt.
Scientists said the plastic likely originated from far away, including the coasts of northwest Europe, the United Kingdom, and the U.S. East Coast. Some plastic was also likely brought there by local shipping activity.
"The sea has no boundaries," Maria-Luiza Pedrotti of Sorbonne Universités-CNRS in France, said in the news release. "Plastic trash generated in one place can pollute other, even remote areas and have devastating effects on a virgin ecosystem such as the Arctic."
Floating Arctic plastic accounts for only about 3 percent of the global total, according to the study.
Yet more plastic is likely to pile up in the polar region as pollution from lower latitudes continuously flows upward. The scientists said they are particularly worried about how these pollution flows could affect the Arctic's fragile ecosystems, which are already feeling the effects of global warming.
So, in case you needed another reminder to reduce, reuse, and recycle, think of the polar bears. They might be eating your garbage.
Maria Gallucci was a Science Reporter at Mashable. She was previously the energy and environment reporter at International Business Times; features editor of Makeshift magazine; clean economy reporter for InsideClimate News; and a correspondent in Mexico City until 2011. Maria holds degrees in journalism and Spanish from Ohio University's Honors Tutorial College.
