Chloe
06-26-2013, 10:51 AM
http://youtu.be/mOZngsJU2k0
Not surprising, but sad nonethelessWe've all seen images of trash on beaches, or floating on the surface (http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/theres-more-than-one-ocean-trash-gyre-5-gyres-project-switches-focus-from-great-pacific-garbage-patch-to-other-4-gyres-video.html) of the ocean. But a surprising amount ends up on the deep seafloor, at depths so great that it's been very hard for us to really know what the situation is. Because it's no very practical to fund a deep sea mission just to look for trash, researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (http://www.mbari.org/) instead decided to comb through thousands of hours of video recorded by remotely controlled vehicles over the past 20+ years, specifically looking for debris.
About 1/3 of the trash were made of plastic, more than half of those being plastic bags, which are notoriously dangerous for marine life. Next were metal objects, at about 1/5 of the total. Other common debris included rope, fishing equipment, glass bottles, paper, and cloth items.
Because of deep sea conditions (very cold water, little oxygen, few bacteria), all of this trash will likely stick around much longer than it would do on the ground.
Researchers study 18,000 hours of deep sea footage, find ocean seafloor is covered in trash : TreeHugger (http://www.treehugger.com/ocean-conservation/researchers-study-18000-hours-deep-sea-footage-ocean-seafloor-covered-trash.html)
Not surprising, but sad nonethelessWe've all seen images of trash on beaches, or floating on the surface (http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/theres-more-than-one-ocean-trash-gyre-5-gyres-project-switches-focus-from-great-pacific-garbage-patch-to-other-4-gyres-video.html) of the ocean. But a surprising amount ends up on the deep seafloor, at depths so great that it's been very hard for us to really know what the situation is. Because it's no very practical to fund a deep sea mission just to look for trash, researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (http://www.mbari.org/) instead decided to comb through thousands of hours of video recorded by remotely controlled vehicles over the past 20+ years, specifically looking for debris.
About 1/3 of the trash were made of plastic, more than half of those being plastic bags, which are notoriously dangerous for marine life. Next were metal objects, at about 1/5 of the total. Other common debris included rope, fishing equipment, glass bottles, paper, and cloth items.
Because of deep sea conditions (very cold water, little oxygen, few bacteria), all of this trash will likely stick around much longer than it would do on the ground.
Researchers study 18,000 hours of deep sea footage, find ocean seafloor is covered in trash : TreeHugger (http://www.treehugger.com/ocean-conservation/researchers-study-18000-hours-deep-sea-footage-ocean-seafloor-covered-trash.html)