Remember when the ocean shores were covered with plastic confetti? Researches now believe the clear seas are caused by wind driving large amounts of plastic pollution deeper into the sea. A new study has theorized that past estimates of marine plastic pollution has been greatly underestimated. “By factoring in the wind, which is fundamentally important to the physical behavior, you’re increasing the rigor of the science and doing something that has a major impact on the data,” , an oceanographer at the University of Washington. After a study including samples collected from multiple ranges of depths rom the surface of the ocean to as far as 100 feet down, Proskurowski and his team concluded that there is two and a half more times the plastic waste than recorded before. In high winds, the amount of plastic trash recorded in the ocean could be underestimated by a factor of 27. The scope of the (plastic debris) problem is not just at the very surface but goes down to 20 meters or so, and that plastic is distributed throughout this layer,” Proskurowski said during an interview. Proskurowski and his team plan on publishing their research to encourage other scientists to conduct research of their own and spread the word.
