The latest study shows that more than 15 million tons of microplastics have settled on the seabed.

As shown by the latest study of scientists, which was published in a new report from the National Science Agency of Australia, on There is twice as much microplastic on the seafloor as expected, and it is also twice as much as the amount of plastic scattered on the surface. ocean.

During the scientific expedition, soil samples were taken from bottom sediments located several hundred miles off the Australian coast in the Great Australian Bight. In this case, the samples were taken from depths of 1655 and 3062 meters.

Special processing of the samples made it possible to isolate the plastic particles from other organic materials, and the results greatly surprised the scientists.

As it turned out, plastic in marine sediments contains 14 plastic particles per gram of bottom sediments.

After making a simple calculation on the average number of particles in the samples and the size of the ocean (361.1 million square kilometers), it was estimated that there are at least 15 million tons of plastic in the ocean.

Given that this area of ​​the globe is the least polluted, the amount of microplastics in other oceans may be significantly higher.

Plastic is a big problem around the world

Of course, the negative impact of larger plastic in the oceans is more visible. And the environmental problem is more obvious. Since in the oceans you can already observe huge garbage patches, which already significantly interfere with the full life of marine animals.

Scientists have been sounding the alarm for a long time, and the latest data on the content of microplastics in bottom sediments only emphasize the importance of this problem for the whole world.

Scientists hope that their work will have an impact on people, and they will be able to reduce the use of plastic in everyday life (buy less single-use bags, for example).

You can personally get acquainted with the results of the scientific work done on the pages of the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

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