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International scientists have found a record density of 1.9 million microplastic particles per square meter in the Mediterranean near Italy, warning that contamination could be even higher in other parts of the sea.
“This is the highest reported value for any seafloor environment, globally,” the team, led by geologist Ian Kane of the British University of Manchester, wrote in the journal Science.
The researchers found that microplastics are primarily swept across the ocean floor by currents and accumulate in “hot spots” of contamination.
These currents are known to supply oxygen and nutrients to organisms living around the seabed, “suggesting that the critical hotspots for deep-sea biodiversity are also hotspots for microplastics,” they said.
If the team’s model is accurate, “the abundance of microplastics in other parts of the Mediterranean may be even greater than the values we report here,” they added.
Kane told the BBC that the bottom currents create “drift deposits” similar to the giant underwater sand dunes.
“They are among the largest accumulations of sediment on Earth,” he said. “They are predominantly made of very fine silt, so it is intuitive to expect microplastics to be found within them.”
Britain’s National Oceanography Center reported last month that more than 10 million tons of plastic pollution enters the world’s oceans annually.
It is estimated that 99% of the plastic is “stored in the deep sea, often … accumulating in underwater canyons.”
