There is no one person in the world who does not know the use of plastic. In fact, there are too many people using plastic that the recycling world couldn't seem to keep up. And because it is going through quite a huge change, the recycling industry has put a lot of its processes on hold and the world just couldn't keep its plastic to itself.
Today, the microplastic particles have reached the deepest ocean waters and scientists are not surprised. Plastics have hurt the marine life in that most significant of ways, but the problem is far more reaching than what people think they know. Only this month, a beaked whale was found in the shores in Asia with about 88 pounds of plastic waste found inside its stomach. It was washed up dead in the shore and people were shocked by the amount of waste found inside the sea creature.
The huge plastic wastes are not just the problem. In truth, the microplastics are the ones truly making a dent in endangering the lives of marine creatures. Even fish and planktons ingest these microplastic components which often result in their death. Without them noticing, they have already built-up plastic components in their body.
Unfortunately, the problem is even bigger than people thought. According to the study conducted by a team of researchers from the University of New Castle, the creatures from the farthest depths of the ocean are now consuming microplastics. The team was led by Dr. Alan Jamieson. Crustaceans were collected from six various deep sea-trenches. They collected it from various places in the world, including the trenches in Japan, New Hebrides, and the Mariana Trench.
The results were recorded by the Royal Society Open Science and the scientists who saw the results were unpleasantly shocked. Turtles are usually seen as the main creatures that have been greatly affected by marine pollution, but there are a lot more out there. Their deaths are growing faster and as the world moves into more industrial presence, the pollution that is slowly killing marine life is just getting stronger.
What can be considered as even worse than that is the fact that the deeper the scientists look, the more trash they see? At the depth of about 11,000 meters of the Mariana Trench, the researchers were able to see microplastic in 100% of all the crustaceans that were collected. If this news isn't alarming yet, there's no reason what would be.
"The results of the study shows that the man-made plastics by humans are culminating in the ecosystem. It is slowly killing the species that inhabit the area," said Alan Jamieson, a marine scientist from the New Castle press release.
It is unlikely to find marine ecosystems that have not been contaminated by plastic. If the deepest of the oceans are no longer safe from plastics, where would people be?
