World Without US

4 readers

1 users here now

**World news, outside the US.** Original rationale: unless moderated, internal US news and politics often dominates world news in English, because of its demographic position. This magazine/community is to post news and articles from around the globe, but posts must have a mainly non-US component or focus. Submissions related in some way to the Alan Weisman book *The World Without Us*, which is about what would happen if humans suddenly disappeared from the planet, are also welcome. :)

founded 1 year ago

Ocean floor a 'reservoir' of plastic pollution, study finds (phys.org)

submitted 7 months ago by livus@kbin.social to c/worldwithoutus@kbin.social

3 comments fedilink hide all child comments

New research from CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, and the University of Toronto in Canada, estimates up to 11 million metric tons of plastic pollution is sitting on the ocean floor. The article, "Plastics in the deep sea—A global estimate of the ocean floor reservoir," was published in Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers.

Scientific data was used to build two predictive models to estimate the amount and distribution of plastic on the ocean floor—one based on data from remote operated vehicles (ROVs) and the other from bottom trawls. Using ROV data, 3 to 11 million metric tons of plastic pollution is estimated to reside on the ocean floor.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] maculata@aussie.zone 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Mostly due to Asia.

[–] livus@kbin.social 1 points 7 months ago

Asian countries are far from the only ones which use plastics.

this research looks at larger items, from nets and cups to plastic bags and everything in between."

Also found they cluster in shallow water around continents, plural.