507
views
1
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    4
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: found
      Is Open Access

      Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic

      research-article

      Read this article at

      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Ocean plastic can persist in sea surface waters, eventually accumulating in remote areas of the world’s oceans. Here we characterise and quantify a major ocean plastic accumulation zone formed in subtropical waters between California and Hawaii: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). Our model, calibrated with data from multi-vessel and aircraft surveys, predicted at least 79 (45–129) thousand tonnes of ocean plastic are floating inside an area of 1.6 million km 2; a figure four to sixteen times higher than previously reported. We explain this difference through the use of more robust methods to quantify larger debris. Over three-quarters of the GPGP mass was carried by debris larger than 5 cm and at least 46% was comprised of fishing nets. Microplastics accounted for 8% of the total mass but 94% of the estimated 1.8 (1.1–3.6) trillion pieces floating in the area. Plastic collected during our study has specific characteristics such as small surface-to-volume ratio, indicating that only certain types of debris have the capacity to persist and accumulate at the surface of the GPGP. Finally, our results suggest that ocean plastic pollution within the GPGP is increasing exponentially and at a faster rate than in surrounding waters.

          Related collections

          Most cited references27

          • Record: found
          • Abstract: not found
          • Article: not found

          Operational multivariate ocean data assimilation

            Bookmark
            • Record: found
            • Abstract: not found
            • Article: not found

            Origin, dynamics and evolution of ocean garbage patches from observed surface drifters

              Bookmark
              • Record: found
              • Abstract: not found
              • Article: not found

              Variability of the Kuroshio Extension Jet, Recirculation Gyre, and Mesoscale Eddies on Decadal Time Scales

                Bookmark

                Author and article information

                Contributors
                laurent.lebreton@theoceancleanup.com
                Journal
                Sci Rep
                Sci Rep
                Scientific Reports
                Nature Publishing Group UK (London )
                2045-2322
                22 March 2018
                22 March 2018
                2018
                : 8
                : 4666
                Affiliations
                [1 ]The Ocean Cleanup Foundation, Martinus Nijhofflaan 2, Delft, 2624 ES The Netherlands
                [2 ]The Modelling House, 66b Upper Wainui Road, Raglan, 3297 New Zealand
                [3 ]Teledyne Optech, Inc., 7225 Stennis Airport Road, Kiln, MS 39556 USA
                [4 ]ISNI 0000 0001 0728 6636, GRID grid.4701.2, School of Civil Engineering and Surveying, Faculty of Technology, , University of Portsmouth, Portland Building, ; Portland Street, Portsmouth, PO1 3AH UK
                [5 ]ISNI 0000 0000 9561 4638, GRID grid.262627.5, Department of Biology, , Marine Biology and Environmental Science, Roger Williams University, ; 1 Old Ferry Road, Bristol, RI 02809 USA
                [6 ]Sorbonne Universités, UPMC Univ Paris 06, CNRS, Laboratoire d’Océanographie Microbienne (LOMIC), Observatoire Océanologique, F-66650 Banyuls/mer, France
                [7 ]ISNI 0000000123222966, GRID grid.6936.a, Department of Civil, Geo and Environmental Engineering, , Technical University Munich, Arcisstraße 21, ; Munich, 80333 Germany
                [8 ]ISNI 0000 0001 1009 3608, GRID grid.5560.6, ICBM-Terramare, , Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg, ; Schleusenstr. 1, Wilhelmshaven, 26382 Germany
                [9 ]ISNI 0000 0001 0742 471X, GRID grid.5117.2, Civil Engineering Department, , Aalborg University, ; Fredrik Bajers Vei 5, Aalborg, 9100 Denmark
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5542-0358
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1785-1042
                Article
                22939
                10.1038/s41598-018-22939-w
                5864935
                29568057
                05b3e270-f1ee-4522-80d9-df19ea4f9ec7
                © The Author(s) 2018

                Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

                History
                : 17 October 2017
                : 5 March 2018
                Categories
                Article
                Custom metadata
                © The Author(s) 2018

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

                Comments

                Comment on this article