Our plastic waste doesn't just stay put when it hits the oceans. Currents sweep it into the deep blue abyss, spreading the garbage far and wide. And much of that debris apparently winds up in the Arctic Ocean, a new study found.
Plastics are "abundant and widespread" in the seas east of Greenland and north of Scandinavia —areas that tend to have more polar bears and seals than people. Scientists encountered the pools of plastic during a 2013 expedition around the Arctic Polar Circle.
Led by Spanish biologist Andrés Cózar, the team hadn't expected to find such large accumulations of shopping bags, fishing lines, microbeads, and other plastic fragments, given how far the polar latitudes are from pollution-creating populations. Read more...
More about Garbage Patch, Mariana Trench, Polar Expedition, Marine Plastic Pollution, and Marine Pollution
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