Students at SEA collected tens of thousands of plastic pieces at 6,100 offshore locations. This image shows sargassum, plastic, and a flying fish that was collected from a net.
Click on image for full size
Image Courtesy of Sea Education Association
Marine Scientists, Students Find Widespread Floating Plastic Debris in North Atlantic Ocean
A team of researchers from the Sea Education Association (SEA), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and the University of Hawaii (UH) has conducted a study of plastic debris in the ocean. Certain parts of the ocean contain a lot of plastic.
For this study, researchers collected more than 64,000 individual plastic pieces at 6,100 locations sampled yearly over the course of the study. A plankton net was used to collect plastic debris as well as organisms at each station.
Scinetists have been trying to answer the following question: What happens to all that plastic once it gets to the ocean currents? And how does it interact with deep-sea biology?
An interesting finding from this research is that the concentration of floating plastic hasn't increased in the 22 years of this study, even though more plastic has been put into the ocean. Scientists think that the growth of algae and other invertebrates on the plastic changes it over time and causes it to sink.
To learn more about Sea Education Association's mission and programs, please visit their website.
You might also be interested in:
The water at the ocean surface is moved by powerful wind. The wind is able to move the top 400 meters of the ocean. This moving water is called surface ocean currents. Surface ocean currents form large
...moreScientists have learned that Mount Hood, Oregon's tallest mountain, has erupted in the past due to the mixing of two different types of magma. Adam Kent, a geologist at Oregon State University, says this
...moreThe Earth's mantle is a rocky, solid shell that is between the Earth's crust and the outer core. The mantle is made up of many different reservoirs that have different chemical compositions. Scientists
...moreSome faults look strong and like they wouldn’t cause an earthquake. But it turns out that they can slip and slide like weak faults causing earthquakes. Scientists have been looking at one of these faults
...moreThe sun goes through cycles that last approximately 11 years. These solar cycle include phases with more magnetic activity, sunspots, and solar flares. They also include phases with less activity. The
...moreStudying tree rings doesn't only tell us the age of that tree. Tree rings also show what climate was like while the tree was alive. This means that tree rings can tell us about climates of the past. Two
...moreEarth's first life form may have developed between the layers of a chunk of mica sitting like a multilayered sandwich in primordial waters, according to a new hypothesis. The mica hypothesis, which was
...more