Evidence that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is rapidly accumulating plastic

By Laurent Lebreton, B. Slat, F. Ferrari, B. Sainte-Rose, J. Aitken, R. Marthouse, S. Hajbane, Serena Cunsolo, A. Schwarz, A. Levivier and 6 more. Scientific Reports, 2018

1,465 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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 km2; 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.

Subfields: Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cbd6216cc4dd8bc948ba20943141090562992fab

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

1. E. van Sebille
2. F. Galgani
3. G. Hanke
4. M. Seeley
5. Melanie Bergmann
6. L. Gutow
7. E. Zeng
8. Lei Mai

In Pollution

1. E. van Sebille
2. E. Zeng
3. M. Seeley
4. R. Hale
5. F. Galgani
6. Melanie Bergmann
7. Lei Mai
8. M. L. Guardia

Citations in the corpus

• The quest for seafloor macrolitter: a critical review of background knowledge, current methods and future prospects (2020, background): “Models on marine litter come in many varieties, from very simple budget-style mathematical equations (Koelmans et al 2017, Lebreton et al 2019) to full-blown simulations of plastic dispersion based on fine-resolution outputs from OGCMs (Lebreton et al 2018, Mountford and Morales Maqueda 2019, Onink ”
• A Global Perspective on Microplastics (2020, background): “Lebreton et al. (2018) estimated 45,000 to 129,000 tons of plastic were floating within the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”
• More than 1000 rivers account for 80% of global riverine plastic emissions into the ocean (2021, background): “INTRODUCTION Plastic pollution in oceans and rivers is an emerging environmental hazard (1), and accumulation on riverbanks, deltas, coastlines (2), and the ocean surface (3) is rapidly increasing.”
• Global simulations of marine plastic transport show plastic trapping in coastal zones (2021, methodology): “PBMPD has been found at the surface up to 50 years after its estimated production date [10], and while this PBMPD might not have floated at the ocean surface over this entire time period, it does suggest biofouling requires more than 66 d to sink PBMPD in the open ocean.”