“Deep Ocean as a Final Resting PlaceMs Alice Zhu, a Ph.D. candidate from the University of Toronto who led the study, said the quote of plastic contamination on the ocean floor could be up to 100 times more than the amount of plastic drifting on the oceans surface area based on recent estimates. “However, our research study discovered that plastic will continue to end up in the deep ocean, which ends up being a long-term resting place or sink for marine plastic pollution,”Scientific information was used to develop two predictive designs to approximate the amount and circulation of plastic on the ocean flooring– one based on data from remote-operated lorries (ROVs) and the other from bottom trawls.Using ROV data, 3 to 11 million metric tonnes of plastic pollution is approximated to reside on the ocean floor.The ROV results also reveal that plastic mass clusters around continents– approximately half (46 percent) of the forecasted plastic mass on the international ocean floor lives above 200 m depth.”Reference: “Plastics in the deep sea– An international quote of the ocean floor tank” by Xia Zhu, Chelsea M. Rochman, Britta Denise Hardesty and Chris Wilcox, 2 March 2024, Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers.DOI: 10.1016/ j.dsr.2024.104266 This research is part of CSIROs Ending Plastic Waste Mission, which aims to change the method we make, use, recycle, and dispose of plastic.
