Plastic waste flowing into the oceans is expected to nearly triple in volume in the next 20 years, while efforts to stem the tide have so far made barely a dent in the tsunami of waste, research shows. 

Governments could make drastic cuts to the flow of plastic reaching the oceans through measures such as restricting the sale and use of plastic materials, and mandating alternatives, but even if all the most likely measures are taken it would only cut the waste to little less than half of today’s levels, the analysis found.

Previous estimates put the amount of plastic reaching the oceans each year at about 8m tonnes, but the true figure is much higher at about 11m tonnes, according to the paper published in the journal Science.

Read on via The Guardian

The Italian coastguard is struggling to free a sperm whale caught up in illegal fishing netting off the coast of one of Sicily’s Aeolian islands.

A team of divers and biologists have been working for more than 48 hours to help the whale close to the island of Salina. The whale’s huge size and agitated state has made the operation more challenging.

“The whale seems to have gone crazy,” Carmelo Isgrò, a biologist and diver, told the Italian news agency Ansa on Monday. “We thought that after 24 hours he would get tired, but instead it is not making our job easy.”

Isgrò added that the job was “very risky” as the female whale “does not stop wiggling” due to injuries and netting that “continues to tear at its skin”.

Read on via The Guardian

Forget rainforests. Here’s the real source of our air — and why it’s in danger

As a child, when I learned about how plants produce the oxygen that we breathe, I imagined that I could see that oxygen in the air. In my mind’s eye, I saw vast waves of oxygen rising from a lush tropical rainforest.

The image makes sense — if plants produce oxygen, it stands to reason that bigger plants produce more, and areas of dense vegetation produce more oxygen than areas with only sparse plants. A rainforest, with its multiple levels of vegetation, surely produces the majority of our oxygen, right?

Not quite.

Consider the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest. By one estimate, this entire area is only responsible for a piddling 6 percent of the world’s oxygen production.

So if lush rainforests, filled with many different plant species all living in somewhat tenuous and competitive harmony, aren’t responsible for the creation of most of the air we need to breathe… where’s it coming from?

And are we in danger of accidentally destroying our own air supply in a climate catastrophe?

Read more on Medium

First long-term, “scientifically sound” study on plastic degradation in a water depth of more than 4,000 meter.

Even in the most remote regions of the oceans plastic debris can be found. But usually it is impossible to determine how long they have been lying on the seabed.

Up to now, this has also hampered any attempt to estimate how long plastic degradation might take.

Scientists led by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel have now, for the first time, examined plastic items that have verifiably been at the abyssal seabed for more than 20 years.

As the researchers publish in the online journal Scientific Reports, they could not find any traces of fragmentation or even degradation.

Read on via Circular.

We called the competition Who Found the Weirdest Thing? So far, the entries that day were a motorcycle helmet, a lithium battery covered with scary stickers asking that we return it to the military, and a toy dinosaur.

The dinosaur was warm from the sun and starting to degrade. The ocean had smoothed and worn down its edges. Rocks and sand had crosshatched its skin. It was missing a hind leg. On one side it was dark grey; the sun had bleached its opposite flank white.

It was the second morning of a trip with Ocean Legacy, a group in Canada that collects and recycles plastic pollution from the ocean. We’d spent the first day trudging along Mquqwin beach in British Columbia, plucking bottles and buoys from the driftwood and branches – and it seemed to me the pollution was not as devastating as expected.

Read on via The Guardian

Plastic is everywhere: high atop mountains, scattered through national parks, and floating in the Great Pacific garbage patch. Now, researchers have tracked our plastic waste in another place—the deep sea. To find out whether certain features on the sea floor had greater concentration of microplastics, researchers examined sediment samples from the Tyrrenhian Sea, off the coast of Italy.

They found an average of 41 pieces in each spoonful of sediment from continental shelves. That number dropped to just nine pieces deeper down on the continental slope. But when scientists sampled piles of sediment that build up in the deep ocean, adjacent to fast-flowing currents, they found 190 pieces of microplastics per spoonful of sediment, the highest concentration of microplastics from the sea floor to date, they report this month in Science.

Read on via Science

If people don't have to buy drinking water in bottles, a huge quantity of plastic waste will be diverted.

The problem of plastic pollution pouring into the world's oceans is a big and daunting one, for which countless solutions have been offered. Improve collection services! Build better recycling facilities! Force companies to redesign single-use packaging! Tell people not to buy it! The advice goes on and on.

All of these suggestions are important and play a part in reducing ocean plastic pollution, but there is one idea that could make a bigger dent than the rest: Fix local drinking water supplies and eliminate the need to buy single-use plastic water bottles. This could be the most effective way to reduce households' plastic waste, particularly in developing countries.

Read on via Tree Hugger

A staggering 8 million tons of plastic enter the ocean each year; marine biologists predict that by 2050 the sea will be more saturated with plastic than fish.

Such careless contamination of pollutants not only decimate the natural beauty of our waters, but it also threatens the lifespan of marine mammals, birds and other seafaring wildlife. Moreover, microplastic wastes have been found in human excrement, and particles are small enough to be transferred from an expecting mother to her unborn child.

Concern for the spiraling effects of plastic wastes on our ecosystem propelled ocean advocate and skipper Emily Penn to launch eXXpedition, a global network of multidisciplinary women who spearhead scientific studies and explore sustainable solutions that curb plastic pollution. Much of the success of their work hinges on the community outreach programs that they implement in the distant regions to which they travel. While some of the women involved have science-based backgrounds, the diversity of their skillsets and interests are anchored in the collective goal of diminishing marine pollution and its destructive consequences.

Read on via 1883 Magazine

The abundance of microplastic pollution in the oceans is likely to have been vastly underestimated, according to research that suggests there are at least double the number of particles as previously thought.

Scientists trawled waters off the coasts of the UK and US and found many more particles using nets with a fine mesh size than when using coarser ones usually used to filter microplastics. The addition of these smaller particles to global estimates of surface microplastics increases the range from between 5tn and 50tn particles to 12tn-125tn particles, the scientists say.

Plastic pollution is known to harm the fertility, growth and survival of marine life. Smaller particles are especially concerning because they are the same size as the food eaten by zooplankton, which underpin the marine food chain and play an important role in regulating the global climate. The new data suggests there may be more microplastic particles than zooplankton in some waters.

Read on via The Guardian

Plastic pollution in the ocean is one of the greatest environmental challenges of our generation, visible throughout the ocean and along almost every coast in the world. Plastic has been found in hundreds of marine species, from whales to sea birds, and in some of the most remote places on Earth, from the Galapagos Islands to the Mariana trench and to the Arctic and Antarctic. And the problem is only getting worse. 

Projected growth in plastic production and a growing global population are set to significantly increase the already-large flow of plastic into our oceans in the coming years. The Pew Charitable Trusts is working on solutions to this mounting problem and will release a new analysis in the coming months with the goal of helping inform government and industry actions to address this immense challenge.

Read on via PEW