Key Points
Scientists said that with a garbage truck's worth of plastic entering the ocean every minute, the ocean floor has become a "resting place" or a "reservoir" for most of the plastic pollution..
All this accumulated plastic then gets broken down into smaller pieces before getting mixed with ocean sediments...
"We discovered that the ocean floor has become a resting place, or reservoir, for most plastic pollution, with between three to 11 million tonnes of plastic estimated to be sinking to the ocean floor," said Hardesty, one of the corresponding authors of the study published in the journal Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers...
"However, our research found that plastic will continue to end up in the deep ocean, which becomes a permanent resting place or sink for marine plastic pollution," said lead researcher Alice Zhu, a PhD candidate from the University of Toronto, Canada...
The remainder 46 per cent of the estimated plastic mass resides above a depth of 200 metres, the researchers said.. Inland and coastal seas are predicted to hold as much plastic mass as does the rest of the ocean floor, despite these areas covering much less surface area than oceans, they said.. "These findings help to fill a longstanding knowledge gap on the behaviour of plastic in the marine environment," said Zhu...
