Let's Go Sailing

And what will we see? The ugly footprint of what we've done to the oceans is what. I tell you, the more I think on it, the more disgusted I've become with what we humans have done to the only planet we have.

A walk on the beach in Mumbai

What you see here in the photo is the shit you can see. What you cannot see nobody but deep-diving deep sea drones can see. And that is a universe of plastic on the sea floor. In recent years the production of plastic has quadrupled, so scientists expected to find much much more of it at the surface than they did.

That's because it's not there. It's down at the bottom of the oceans and seas.

The discovery of microplastic in such remote marine habitats raises new questions about the potential for plastic debris to contaminate the food chain. Scientists have already documented that fish, birds, turtles, and other marine animals eat plastic. Thompson and his team found an even greater accumulation of plastic than previously suspected. The more plastic there is, he says, the more potential for toxicity to marine life.

In the study, Thompson and his team concluded that every square kilometer of deep ocean contains about four billion plastic fibers—most are two to three centimeters in length and as thin as a human hair. The fibers are four times more abundant in the deep sea than in surface and coastal waters.

"Our results show evidence for a large and hitherto unknown repository of microplastics," Thompson wrote. "The prevalence of microfibers in all sediment cores and on all coral colonies examined suggests this contaminant is ubiquitous in the deep sea." source

 Isn't this wonderful news?