NEW PLASTIC GARBAGE PATCH DISCOVERED IN ARCTIC OCEAN

889×592.jpg” alt=”Plastic, plastic pollution, ocean plastic, ocean, oceans, Arctic Ocean, Arctic, Arctic waters, Greenland Sea, Barents Sea, Norway, garbage patch, plastic garbage patch, plastic garbage, plastic trash, Anna Deniaud, Tara Expeditions Foundation” width=”598″ height=”398″ />The Tara Expeditions Foundation dragged for plastic in the Arctic Ocean to find the new Arctic garbage patch. They visited 42 sites, and found over a third of the locations didn’t have any plastic. But then they found plastic amassing in Arctic waters above Norway. The garbage patch is smaller than the Pacific or Mediterranean garbage patches, but researchers hadn’t anticipated finding so much trash in that part of the Arctic, previously considered to be quite pristine.

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Andrés Cózar of the University of Cádiz in Spain told The Verge, “We did not expect to find high concentrations of plastic there, so far from the populated regions and the large sources of plastic pollution.” He’s the lead author on a study published online yesterday in the journal Science Advances.

So where’s all the trash coming from? Europe and America’s East Coast are likely at fault. Study co-author Erik van Sebille, who during the research was with Imperial College London and now works for the Netherlands’ Utrecht University, told The Verge, “If a plastic bottle or a plastic bag gets into the Atlantic from Europe or the East Coast of the U.S., that has a very good chance of ending up in the Arctic. The problem with plastic specifically being in the Arctic is that it’s going to get into the food chain of animals that are very much under threat already, that are struggling to survive in a changing climate.”

Via The Verge

Images © Anna Deniaud/Tara Expeditions Foundation