As ships are polluting the world's oceans?

Today, humanity is actively engaged not only in the development of drugs for serious diseases and the exploration of space, but also environmental pollution. If the calculations are correct ecologists, each year in the oceans of our planet gets about 12, 7 tons of plastic, with the greatest amount of waste deposited in the depths of the water. Part of the plastic waste is released into the water from the land, but recently, scientists from South Africa, and Canada found that one of the biggest sources of waste are ships. But as the ships can pollute the water with plastic? Is that possible?

Plastic bottles decompose from 450 to 1000 years

It turns out that, yes. This was the researchers began to suspect back in 2009, during a visit to the island called Inaccessible in the North Atlantic. Environmentalists were shocked by the pollution of the island - on the surface was found to not less than 3515 units of plastic waste such as bottles and cans. Re-visiting the island in 2018 showed that the island has become dirtier and the number of bottles and other waste increased to 8084 units.

Name Inaccessible Island is translated from English as "unavailable" because it is surrounded by cliffs. For a long time it remained untouched nature - it is a favorite place of crested penguins. Now purity of the island is threatened, however, as our entire planet.

Oceans Pollution

The island and the surrounding contaminated water began back in the XX century, as evidenced by found on the coast of the plastic container, made in 1971. Many plastic bottles were labels with the names of manufacturers, so scientists easily found that 75% of plastic waste were produced in China. Since the date of production of the majority of bottles less than even two years, researchers have assumed that the debris could not swim to the island on their own - to overcome the way from China to the island would require a minimum of 5 years. This means that the bottles have been thrown out of the ship.

This is also evidenced by the form of bottles - almost all of them have been well flattened and tightly sealed in. Usually ships with a plastic garbage do just that, so it does not take up much space. According to the African ornithologist Peter Ryan, head of commercial vessels should comply with international agreement and not to throw waste overboard. The negative consequences of ignoring the rules can be seen now by visiting the waters of the North Atlantic.

The ships flatten plastic bottles to save space

plastic trash Danger

Most likely, ships pollute not only the North Atlantic, but the entire world's oceans. And in the abundance of garbage are guilty not only merchant ships but also fishing boats. The fact is that along with the plastic bottles for water is often found pieces of fishing nets, which were carried out from their place of installation. Trap for fish, by the way, today, too, are made of plastic - in one of our materials, we even applied a photo with tangled in fishing nets turtle.

Do you see how nature is contaminated? Share your observations in the comments or in our Telegram-chat.

According to Professor Peter Ryan, companies should pay attention to the problem of pollution of the seas and oceans. May tighten control over the emission of waste, the authorities of different countries and be able to slow down the global ocean pollution. But what to do with garbage that has accumulated? The question remains open.