The Remote Atlantic Island Is Being Coated in a 'Bloom' of Plastic Waste

Human tendency for single-use plastics is a starting point to glaring in some truly awful ways. As we start to really get a clench on the momentousnessof the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, else where in the ocean plastic waste is building on the strand of some of the most remote islands,with a new study exposed the true extent of the chaos and the threatit poses to local species.

In less than ten years, plastic pollution around St. Helena, East Falkland and Ascension Islands has increased tenfold, and 100 times in thelast 30 years. Plastic pollution is rapidly becoming a fixture of Earth's oceans, which are present everywhere from the deepest foxholes to the innate of seabirds drift over the waves. Now, a forth coming study in the October 2019 issue of the journal Science of theTotal Environment shows that a new type of marine plastic pollution could soon paint the world's beaches flaky blue. According to the author’s study they call this previously unknown type of pollution "plastic rust" — substantially, splash of crusty, blue and white plastic inured onto the rocky surfaces wherethe land and sea meet. While recently surveying the beaches of Madeira, an island in the Atlantic Ocean southwest of Portugal, the researchers found that lucid hunk of plastic rust coated roughly 10% of the rocks they surveyed. This was a significant increase in plasticrust report compared to a previous research trip on the island just three years earlier.

In between 2013 and 2018 during four research day out, investigators from the British Antarctic Survey and nine other organizations aboard the RMS James Clark Ross sought to weigh of the plastic around the islands. The team member took samples of marine debris from the water’s surface, the water string, the sea bottom and the beaches. They also found plastic guzzle in 2,243 animals in compare to 26 different species fluctuating across the marine food web from plankton to cusp carnivore, like seabirds; all were identified as the higher consumption of plastic.

What they found was plastic, and lots of the plastic part. About 90 percent of the entire toxin they identified was madeof plastic, which munificent in the ocean, on the beach and inside the animals.

Lead author David Barnes of the British Antarctic Surveysaid -“Three decades ago these islands, which are some of the most remote on the planet, were near-pristine,” in. “Plasticwaste has increased a hundred fold in that time, it is now so common it reaches the seabed. We found it in plankton, throughout the foodchain and up to top predators such as seabirds.”

Study author and biologist at the Royal Society for the Protection ofBirds, Andy Schofield said - "These ocean and the Islands around them are protector of our planet's health,” "It is heart-breaking to seeing millstones trying to eat plastic thousands of miles from anywhere. This is a very big warning call. In action threatens not just endangered birds and whale sharks, but the ecosystems many islanders rely on for food supply and health."

By: Tripti Varun

Content:https://www.livescience.com/65806-blue-plasticrust-pollution-coating-portuguese-island.html