Italy home to highest level of microplastics ever recorded on sea floor

● Contamination found in sediments pulled from the Mediterranean

Scientists have identified the highest levels of microplastics ever recorded on the seafloor.

The contamination was found in sediments pulled from the bottom of the Mediterranean, near Italy.

The analysis, led by the University of Manchester, found up to 1.9 million plastic pieces per square metre.

These items likely included fibres from clothing and other synthetic textiles, and tiny fragments from larger objects that had broken down over time.

The researchers’ investigations lead them to believe that microplastics (smaller than 1mm) are being concentrated in specific locations on the ocean floor by powerful bottom currents.

“These currents build what are called drift deposits; think of underwater sand dunes,” explained Dr Ian Kane, who fronted the international team. They can be tens of kilometres long and hundreds of metres high. They are among the largest sediment accumulations on Earth. They’re made predominantly of very fine silt, so it’s intuitive to expect microplastics will be found within them,” he said..

It’s been calculated that something in the order of four to 12 million tonnes of plastic waste enter the oceans every year, mostly through rivers. Media headlines have focussed on the debris that washes up with the tides on coastlines. But this visible trash is thought to represent just 1 per cent of the marine plastic. The whereabouts of the other 99 per cent is unknown.

Some of it has almost certainly been consumed by sea creatures, but perhaps the much larger proportion has fragmented and simply sunk.

Dr Kane’s team has already shown that deep-sea trenches and ocean canyons can have high concentrations of microplastics in their sediments.

Many other parts of the globe have strong deep-water currents that are driven by temperature and salinity contrasts. The issue of concern will be that these currents also supplyoxygenandnutrientsto deep-sea creatures. And so by following the same route, the microplastics could be settling into biodiversity hotspots, increasing the chance of ingestion by marine life.

Prof Elda Miramontes from theuniversityofbremen,germany, said the same effort shown in the battle against coronavirus must now take on ocean plastic pollution.

“We’re all staying at home and changing our lives so that people are not affected by this sickness. We have to think in the same way when we protect our oceans.”