{"id":6967,"date":"2015-03-27T15:18:07","date_gmt":"2015-03-27T15:18:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bvblog.wpengine.com\/?p=6967"},"modified":"2016-02-17T14:54:05","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T14:54:05","slug":"turning-the-tide-on-marine-plastics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.blueventures.org\/en\/turning-the-tide-on-marine-plastics\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning the tide on marine plastics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s set the scene, we\u2019re on a beautiful white sand beach, dotted with palm trees; a remote tropical paradise, miles away from human habitation. As the tide retreats what\u2019s that left behind in the strandline? Intermixed with the usual bits of seagrass and algae is a band of washed up discarded plastic. It\u2019s a problem which faces us here at Bacalar Chico dive camp in Belize<\/a> and unfortunately it is a story played out all over the world.<\/p>\n

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[Tweet “Let\u2019s set the scene, we\u2019re on a beautiful white sand beach…”]<\/p>\n

As much as 1.6 billion pounds of plastic ends up in the ocean each year! Due to the very nature of plastic, it does not biodegrade meaning plastics can remain in the ocean for many decades. With the action of sunlight and waves plastics fragment into ever smaller pieces- but do not disappear. Here they are able to accumulate in our oceans, being carried by the currents and concentrated where these currents meet- known as ocean gyres. There are five gyres worldwide of which the most well researched in terms of plastic pollution is the North Pacific Gyre. Here there is so much litter it has coined the term the \u2018Great Pacific Garbage Patch\u2019 and spans an area twice the size of Texas.<\/p>\n

This is just the plastic we can see, what about the objects we can\u2019t?<\/span> Studies have revealed plastic debris even in the deep sea, many hundreds, even thousands of meters below the surface. As plastics break up they form \u2018microplastics\u2019, these are small pieces less than 5mm in size making them unseen to the naked eye. Plastic micro-beads are added to cosmetics, such as face and body washes and tooth pastes; washing ourselves in plastic surly can\u2019t good for our health, but furthermore these particles cannot be extracted in water treatment plants and so enter freely into rivers and oceans. Due to their tiny size, microplastics are often overlooked; however they can be so numerous that in some places they outnumber plankton by as much as 6 to 1!<\/p>\n